Not long ago my children took 15-Minute Music lessons by Gena Mayo and they learned about a wide variety of music genres.
We received entry into 15-Minute Music Lessons in exchange for our honest review and were not compensated in any other way.
15-Minute Music Lessons are on the Teachable platform, along with additional music classes that are offered by Gena Mayo. There are 19 lessons, as well as How to Use and Optional Resources sections. This course is currently listed at $32.40 on Teachable.
At the simplest level, the class is open and go. Log into the class, read the short text in a lesson and watch the embedded YouTube videos. Most of the lessons have 3-6 videos that can be watched in a short time. There is one lesson in which the music collection takes an hour, but this can be divided over more than one day.
For most lessons there are also downloadable PDFs that can be printed. At the end of the lessons there are three to five multiple choice questions to answer by clicking on the correct option. These are self-correcting and will tell you if you’ve chosen the correct answer before moving to the next question.
Many of the lessons also present additional resources students may want to explore to delve deeper into the topics.
How Does 15-Minute Music Lessons Work?
The lessons can be adjusted to the abilities of the student, as well as how deep each topic will be explored. Using fifteen minutes a day, it would take about three weeks to complete the course. Going deeper into the topics, a student may want to take a week or more to complete a lesson.
The lessons can be used in different ways depending on the ages and abilities of the student. For younger children the lessons could simply be to open the lesson, read the short texts, and then watch and listen to the music linked via YouTube.
For middle-range students, there are easy PDFs provided that can be printed for students to complete. Some of the PDFs are very easy such as coloring or matching. Others are more in-depth and require students to think about how the music makes them feel, or to do a little research into a particular composer.
The lessons could also be expanded for further learning by older students by asking them to do short assignments or papers about specific composers, styles of music, or even periods of time.
You can find some free 15-Minute Music Lessons on Music in My Homeschool, including one on Star Wars.
Our Opinion
My children enjoyed this class as it wasn’t too taxing and it gave them something relaxing to do during their school day. They completed the course in roughly three weeks, usually completing a lesson a day. I was able to use the same PDFs for both of my children, expecting more of my elder child than my younger when it came to researching instruments or learning interesting facts about a composer.
I would have preferred more differentiated PDFs, and perhaps an answer key for a few of the sheets that asked about tempo changes in a specific piece, for example as my children had different answers, but for the majority of the PDFs the answers were clearly found in the text of the lessons.
In Conclusion
15-Minute Music Lessons is a good introduction to different genres ranging from Handel’s Messiah to A Cappella to Music of the Olympics and music from the movie, Frozen. Students will begin to learn about music appreciation and how to think more critically about it than simply enjoying it or not. Such skills will expand their musical world into the future as well.
If you like what you see, you can find out more about Music in our Homeschool on her webpage, or follow on Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest or Twitter,
This product review first appeared on The Old Schoolhouse® Magazine, LLC, August, 2020.
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