SQUILT Live: How to Appreciate Beautiful Music
Today I am more than happy to share about SQUILT Live classes with you. We love these classes! We have been long-time members of SQUILT and they are a homeschool-family run company that I think you’ll love too. Keep reading for a detailed description of what SQUILT is and exactly how it works. I’m also sharing how studying music has lead us on all sorts of fun rabbit trails!
But first…
Do you ever hear a song and it immediately transports you back to another time and place in your life? For me, Maria singing My Favorite Things makes me think of my mother and plopping a bowl of popcorn on my lap at 7pm on the dot for several evenings in a row so we could view The Sound of Music on a special on cable.
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That musical stuck with me so thoroughly that I could not wait to show it to my kids when they could sit through a 3-hour musical. Now, it only takes .003 seconds walking outside in the snow for one of my kids to strike up the tune: snowflakes that stay on my nose and eyelashes!
These are memories made by connecting with my favorite people in the world over good, quality, beautiful music. There are few connections like it!
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Because I have my own childhood memories over music–Maria the nun turned governess, the hymns from Sunday morning mass, dancing around the dining room table with my parents to Gloria Estefan’s Conga!– I understand the impact that introducing our kids to amazing music creates.
30 years later, if I hear Gloria Estefan’s voice, I immediately smile at the memory of my dad dancing to Latin pop music!
Music has always been a huge part of our family/homeschool life. Memories including music.
What is SQUILT?
SQUILT (Super Quiet UnInterrupted Listening Time) is an affordable, music appreciation curriculum that is easy to teach and easy to use.
If you are not a musical person at all, that is a-OK! No musical knowledge is needed. Your children will be taught by Ms. Mary, a homeschool mom and music education undergrad. She has created these lessons with your family in mind to make them easy to navigate and enjoy together as a family.
You can choose from the huge database of lessons (over 115 lessons!) and/or let Ms. Mary teach your children in the live lessons that take places twice monthly. Being able to be taught live by Ms. Mary creates such a special connection. When I’m scrolling Instagram and see Mary pop up, Vera always recognizes her voice and comments, “Is that Ms. Mary on your phone!?” I love that.
Each month covers a different musical themes (more on those later) and the lessons expose your children to the most rich and beautiful music.
As I’ve shared before, I’m not a huge screen-time advocate. I dislike using screens for lessons too much, but SQUILT is actually a high-quality, educational screen time activity.
Quick Facts about SQUILT
- Each month rings in a new monthly theme around things like a composer, style of music, time period of music, and more
- Membership includes access to back lessons, over 115 lessons total to watch at your leisure
- Twice per month Ms. Mary teaches a live lesson around the monthly theme. Each lesson is taught on a Monday and Thursday to make scheduling for your family easier.
- Besides monthly lessons, the membership includes extra fun things like special events, book suggestions, visits from professional musicians and more!
- Each new month brings a new theme and a new Listening Calendar. We LOVE these! A great selection of music to listen to every day of the month.
SQUILT Isn’t Just a Study on Composers
If you’re looking for a music appreciation curriculum that will simply teach your child about composers, this isn’t it. SQUILT does teach your children about different composers, but mostly it will teach your children how to appreciate beautiful music!
Here are some of the different topics SQUILT has covered in past lessons:
- Baroque, Classical, Romantic masters
- jazz
- musicals
- modern movie music
- songs from Tin Pan Alley
- women composers
- composers of all backgrounds
- in 2021, SQUILT dedicated an entire month to musicians with differing abilities
- folk songs
- music from around the world
- and so much more!
What are the benefits of SQUILT
Sometimes the ease of use for the homeschool mom is just as important as what’s inside the curriculum itself, so I want to point out some of the benefits of SQUILT from my vantage point as homeschool mom!
- We watch and listen to the Listening Calendar and lessons together. Not every single day or every single class, but my point is SQUILT offers something for the entire family–even teens–and this is invaluable to me! I love when we can all connect over our curriculum!
- SQUILT is great for all ages! For us, gather Vera around to watch the lessons, but we are almost always all nearby and listening/watching together.
- Members have access to an absolutely HUGE database of lessons. For me this means no matter what we are studying in science, history, art, and more I can scroll through the past lessons and pull out lessons that pertain to what we are studying, further tying all my kids’ senses into the unit study we are doing.
- If you have older kids, many times they can handle the lessons, registration, attendance themselves–a great lesson in independence!
- As the mama who plans all the things and teaches all the things, you can literally TAKE A BREAK while Ms. Mary teaches your kids for a while! Fold a load of laundry, prep dinner, spend one-on-one time with a high schooler, OR sit back and learn with your kids without having to do a single thing!
How SQUILT leads to rabbit trails
The monthly themes are so inspiring in our homeschool because we almost always fall down rabbit holes. For instance, we recently studied Fiddler on the Roof. This brought us to watching the 1970’s movie, which we loved. Then we were interested in the history surrounding the context of the musical, so we read all about that. Then a nearby theater was running the show, so we HAD to get tickets and experience it live!
On the months that SQUILT covers modern movie music, it never fails to send us into a movie marathon, watching all the great titles from the Listening Calendar that we haven’t seen yet. We love movie nights at our house, especially in the cozy Minnesota winters.
Sometimes the month theme will cover a period of music, which leads us into studying more about that time period and what else that was happening in the world besides the music.
Making these difference connections is one of my very favorite things about homeschooling!
I highly recommend checking out SQUILT LIVE to start making your own musical memories with your kids!