Discover free and premium homeschool music lesson options and resources below!
Here at Hoffman Academy, we believe that the joy of music lessons can transform your homeschooler’s learning experience. Music lessons provide a key creative outlet and opportunities for personal growth for homeschooled students. With the collection of free online music resources we’ve included below, you can bring the joy of learning music to your student without the high cost of private lessons. In this article, we’ll discuss the skills that music lessons reinforce along with information that can help you select online homeschool music lessons. Plus, if you’re looking for some great resources for homeschool and music teaching, we’ve included a list of our favorites at the end of the article.
Ready to bring the benefits of music lessons into your homeschool curriculum? Try Premium today for free access to 500+ of additional worksheets, progress tracking, and more!
What is the best age to start music class?
Music appreciation and listening can start at any age! By listening to music together, singing together – even playing traditional clapping games – you can encourage young children to be excited by music. Some of the free resources later in this article, such as the listening and art projects from the MaestroClassics curriculum, can be incorporated into homeschool lessons with pre-school children.
At Hoffman Academy, we think the ages between 6-8 generally offer a great time to start learning piano. In those years, most children’s hands will be large enough to play comfortably and their fine motor skills will help them independently move their fingers. Our article Beginning Piano Lessons shares more key milestones to consider in a child’s development for piano lessons. If you think your child might not be ready yet, you can also check out our resource 10 Things to Do Before Starting Piano.
What skills are taught in homeschool music lessons?
Learning music empowers students to develop important skills like time management, mental focus, and good practicing habits. Playing an instrument can supplement educational programs by encouraging creativity alongside skills including fine motor control and patience. The skills music lessons teach put students on the path to academic success. Studies (like this one of over 100,000 high school students), have shown that children who are involved in music have significantly higher grades across all academic subjects.
In the Hoffman Method, kids start by playing music by ear, learning the language of music in the same manner they learn to speak. Hoffman Academy’s music curriculum develops students’ technical skills at the piano and expands their knowledge of music history and music theory. Our video-based self-guided program provides a unique musical experience that fully immerses students in musical learning.
What is a music curriculum?
A comprehensive music curriculum puts students on the path to understanding and playing music. One important thing the lessons should cover is music literacy, or students’ ability to read and write music. Another cornerstone of becoming a well-rounded musician is music theory and ear training, including identifying chords, rhythms, and musical structure. Other pieces of a well-rounded curriculum include learning about music history and opportunities to be musically creative with improvisation and composition. You can read a more detailed description of music curriculum and the methods for teaching music in our blog post Exploring a Music Curriculum: Homeschool Options.
For homeschoolers, a curriculum ideally includes the tools to facilitate learning, including lesson plans, materials, and worksheets alongside additional learning aids, like flashcards and games. Our fully-developed online piano lessons make homeschooling easy because we include the tools your students need to succeed. At Hoffman Academy, our comprehensive music curriculum builds fundamental music skills and includes tools like worksheets and learning aids to help students progress. Designed with learning theory in mind, every piano lesson and worksheet offers a complete musical education that empowers students. Our students develop an understanding of music at a deep level, as classes incorporate skills like sight reading, ear training, and rhythm alongside improvisation and composition.
Are there free online homeschool music lessons for kids?
Our entire library of 300+ video lessons and popular songs is free for anyone to view! At Hoffman Academy, our mission is to give all kids around the world a chance to learn piano, and free video lessons help realize that goal. Using a computer or tablet, any homeschool student can access the free on-demand videos that form the cornerstone of our comprehensive music curriculum.
Additionally, we offer Premium tools that enhance student learning and complement the video lessons including educational games, custom practice sessions, unit books, and more. With Premium, our daily practice plans tell your child what to work on, encouraging independent learning outside of the online lesson. Learning music theory is even more fun with our educational games, like Alphabet Towers for practicing note names and Staff Crawler for practice reading notes.
Hoffman Academy also offers a collection of free and paid Learning Resources for our online homeschool students. With free resources including The Grand Staff Guide, all the Major and Minor scales, the Ultimate Piano Chord Chart, and more, we offer supplementary materials for your online homeschool needs. Our easy-to-understand musical infographics make great companions for learning to play piano. Plus, our collection of free music history blog posts can be used to reinforce your history and social studies assignments!
We’ve included additional free music homeschool resources below. This collection of resources includes links to websites focusing on science, music theory, music appreciation, and more. If you’re still looking for more information about free online resources, check out our article How To Include Music in Your Homeschool Curriculum for additional tips and tricks to incorporate science, math, and history into your student’s music studies.
Free Resources to integrate Music and STEM in your Homeschool
Looking for a Science and Technology integration for music to pair with video lessons? Chrome Music Lab offers a free online tool to visualize the science of sound in music. Students can explore the science behind chords, harmonics, and arpeggios, which makes this an excellent resource for a student with some musical knowledge to experiment creatively with sound.
Like any lab course, Chrome Music Lab works best with an adult guiding the experiments. For a fun experiment, we recommend Spectrogram, an awesome visualization that breaks a sound into its different frequencies. Sound Waves shows how sound travels through the air. In this experiment, each dot on the screen represents an air molecule. When you hit a key on the piano, you can see how the molecules push and pull as the sound wave passes by.
A comprehensive resource connecting music to STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math) classes, the free MaestroClassics curriculum guides provide homeschool teachers an opportunity to combine music with history, science, math, geography, and more. Each curriculum guide pairs with a Maestro Classics recording to offer a lesson plan about that piece of music. After listening to Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker with a student, make your own nutcracker to explore the physics of levers (since a nutcracker is a lever). Or, listen to Peter and the Wolf before learning historical information about the Soviet Union and exploring scientific activities about the nature of sound.
Free Online Music Theory Resources for Homeschoolers
Another excellent supplementary resource, MusicTheory offers free online music theory lessons to reinforce the basics of music theory, rhythm and meter. Lessons are text-based with graphics illustrating musical concepts. Additionally, there are exercises including identifying note names and key signatures, building major and minor chords, and ear training exercises.
Similarly, Teoria also offers free online text-based music theory lessons. In Teoria, students can select tutorials about reading music, intervals, scales, chords, musical forms, and more. Students with a MIDI keyboard can practice their knowledge with Teoria’s Exercises, including grand staff reading games.
Theta Music Trainer offers free ear training courses and exercises for homeschoolers. In the “Intro to Ear Training” course, homeschools students can experiment with volume and mixing. The aural recognition drills for major and minor chords also offer a great pairing for a student already in lessons.
Free Music History and Music Appreciation Options for Homeschoolers
A free online education outreach program, Classics for Kids provides homeschooled students with podcast-based lessons, worksheets, fun facts, and articles about famous composers and world music. For parents, each composer has a lesson plan to help meet educational goals and objectives.
EdX, a nonprofit created in collaboration by Harvard and MIT, offers numerous online music appreciation and music history lessons. Perfect for a high-achieving homeschooled student between grades 9-12, the courses are free to audit and include topics like Introduction to Italian Opera from Dartmouth and World Music, Culture, & You from Trinity College. The free version of these courses does not include supplemental materials like worksheets, so a student taking Introduction to Music Theory might want to use additional resources to reinforce.
For families looking for a religious option, All In One Homeschool offers a basic, free Music Appreciation guide for K-8 and 9-12th graders. Each week offers a collection of links and tasks for a student to complete. Students will learn about the instrument families –brass, woodwind, and percussion – but the guide does not cover music theory or how to play an instrument.
Free Homeschool Music Lessons for Guitar
JustinGuitar offers free guitar lessons online. With a comprehensive curriculum, JustinGuitar offers courses for beginner and intermediate guitar players. The video based lessons also cover ear training for guitar players and theory for guitar. While the majority of the lessons are free, some courses and apps include paid content.
Homeschool Music Lessons: There’s an option for you!
Hopefully the resources and tools in this article help you along your musical journey to incorporate music to your homeschool! Whatever resources you choose to use, adding music to your homeschool curriculum can benefit your student’s academic performance while providing a fun activity. And, if you’re ready to start teaching piano in your homeschool classes, sign up to try Premium today!