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Have you used the book in any of your classes? I have used it and actually I’ve been doing forms of this in my classroom for a long time with different pieces of music. I’m lucky enough to have really good tools. I use a smart board, which is like an interactive white board and I’m able to bring things up as I need to, and that’s what gave me the idea for the book, to make it as interactive as possible. In class, I bring different composers in all the time and we have fun playing “name that composer.” I’ll play a piece and ask, "who wrote this?"
Any tips for parents who want to start playing more classical music at home? A lot of the time we use music too much as background music and don’t pay attention to it. We put it on and it’s almost like a movie score to our lives, which is fine. But I think it’s really important to use it very deliberately. If you are going to put in a CD, then I think you need to sit down and listen and then talk about what you’re hearing. Talk about how this music makes you feel, or dance to the music, or draw attention to the different instruments and look up the instrumentation. Really focus on it and make it important. Use music at bedtime in addition to stories, put on music and make up a story to the music that you hear. Create the stories and act them out with your kids. You can also play music in the bath and kids can splash along to the rhythm of the music. Make it part of playtime. Add music to almost everything you do, but bring focus to it.
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