Wonder of Music Course (Teacher’s Guide)

30 Weeks | 1 lesson per week | Elemenary Grades

Music is one of humanity’s greatest gifts. From the steady beat of a drum to the soaring voices of an opera, music helps us celebrate, communicate, worship, tell stories, and express emotions that words alone cannot capture.

The Wonder of Music is a complete 30-week elementary music curriculum designed for homeschool co-ops, microschools, classrooms, and families. Through 150 engaging lessons, students will explore music from every angle—learning how music works, discovering instruments from around the world, meeting great composers, experiencing musicals and opera, singing folk songs, creating their own music, and developing the listening skills that help them become lifelong music lovers.

Rather than focusing only on performance, this course invites children to appreciate the beauty, creativity, and history of music while building confidence through hands-on activities, discussion, movement, games, and creative expression.

Each week includes materials for five engaging classroom lessons, making it easy to teach music even if you have little or no formal musical training.

What You’ll Study

Unit 1 — Discovering Music

Explore what music is, how it communicates emotion, where we hear music every day, and why music has been part of every culture throughout history.

Unit 2 — The Building Blocks of Music

Learn about rhythm, beat, melody, tempo, dynamics, pitch, harmony, musical notation, and the language musicians use to create beautiful music.

Unit 3 — Making Music

Discover the many families of instruments while learning how orchestras, bands, choirs, and ensembles work together to create amazing performances.

Unit 4 — Music Through History

Travel through history as students meet influential composers, explore the development of musical styles, and discover how music has changed across cultures and centuries.

Unit 5 — Music Around the World

Experience folk music, cultural traditions, instruments, dances, and celebrations from countries around the globe while learning how music connects people everywhere.

Unit 6 — Musicals, Opera, and Performance

Discover the excitement of musical theater and opera while exploring storytelling through music, famous productions, costumes, staging, and live performance.

Teacher’s Guide Includes

• 30 weekly lessons
• Teacher lesson plans
• Hands-on activities and creative projects
• Listening and discussion prompts
• Vocabulary and music concepts
• Book, recording, and resource recommendations
• Reproducible classroom pages
• Full-color photographs and illustrations throughout
• Narration and reflection opportunities

Teacher License

You may:

• Teach the curriculum to your own class or homeschool group.
• Print or maintain one personal working copy.
• Display pages digitally during instruction.
• Copy only pages specifically marked “Reproducible” for classroom use.

Additional teachers should purchase their own licensed copy.

Whether you’re teaching in a homeschool co-op, microschool, private school, or at home, this open-and-go Teacher’s Guide provides everything you need for 30 weeks of joyful, discussion-rich music instruction that helps students not only understand how music works, but also appreciate its beauty, history, creativity, and power to bring people together across cultures and generations.