Music

About this course

Second grade music takes the ideas your student met in first grade and asks for real work with them. Rhythm moves past clapping into notation: quarter, half, whole, and eighth notes with their matching rests, measures and bar lines, 2/4 and 4/4 time signatures, downbeats, Italian tempo words like allegro and adagio, and the repeating pattern called an ostinato. Melody work covers stepwise motion versus leaps, melodic contour, the difference between major and minor tonality, reading simple melodies off the staff, and solfege with hand signs. The unit ends by asking your student to compose an eight-note melody of their own on the pentatonic scale and give it a title.

Singing gets its own unit -- posture, unison, echo singing, rounds like "Frere Jacques" and "Row, Row, Row Your Boat," scripture songs, the hymn "All Things Bright and Beautiful," caring for the voice, dynamics, and performing for others. Then come the instrument families in detail (percussion, strings, winds, keyboards, the orchestra, and building a found-sound instrument), and a history unit that is more substantial than most families expect at this age: Jubal in Genesis, the Psalms as Israel's hymnal, early church hymns and chant, Johann Sebastian Bach and his habit of writing Soli Deo Gloria at the end of a score, Handel's Messiah, American folk music, and Fanny Crosby. A final theory unit consolidates note names, note values, rests, measures, dynamics, tempo markings, and repeat signs.

The course is 72 lessons in eight units of nine. Units 7 and 8 repeat units 1 and 2 exactly as a second pass, so 54 of the lessons are distinct and eighteen come around twice. A lesson takes about 20 minutes: two or three paragraphs of reading, a hands-on activity (clap this pattern, draw a staff, sing a round with a parent, listen to "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring" and write down three words for what you heard), and a ten-question quiz that grades itself. Every lesson carries a KJV verse. No instrument is required, though a keyboard helps with the note-name lessons and household objects stand in for percussion. The course is entirely text-based -- there are no recordings built in, so when a lesson asks your student to listen to Bach or to a minor-key tune, you will need to find it. A second grader can read much of this alone, but the singing, the rounds, and the listening all work better with you there.

What the course covers

• Steady beat, downbeats, tempo words, and ostinato patterns
• Note values, rests, measures, and 2/4 and 4/4 time
• Reading pitches on the staff and solfege with hand signs
• Melodic contour, steps and leaps, major and minor
• Composing a short melody on the pentatonic scale
• Singing posture, breath, unison, echo, and rounds
• Hymns, scripture songs, and singing as worship
• Percussion, strings, winds, keyboards, and the orchestra
• Bach, Handel, Fanny Crosby, and music in church history
• Dynamics, tempo markings, and repeat signs

What your student will be able to do

• Read and clap rhythms using quarter, half, whole, and eighth notes and rests
• Count measures in 2/4 and 4/4 and find the downbeat
• Sing a solfege scale with hand signs and read a simple melody from the staff
• Hold a part while singing a two-group round
• Compose and notate an original pentatonic melody
• Identify instruments by family and name several composers and what they wrote

Scope and sequence

All 8 units of Music for Grade 2, in the order they are taught.

Every lesson, by title

All 72 lesson titles are listed here — nothing is withheld until you download. Open a unit to read its contents.

One whole lesson, exactly as it comes

This is a real lesson taken from the middle of the course — the teaching text, the practice, the homework, and the first three quiz questions with their answers. It is not a marketing excerpt.

What you will need

Drawn from the materials named across all 72 lessons of this course. Most families already own most of it.