BIG Spring Sales on Classical [and more] Homeschool Curriculum!

05 Wednesday Apr 2023

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Books, Christian Classical Education, Christian Classical Homeschool, Classical Education, Classical Homeschool, Curriculum Sales, Elementary Music, Home Education, homeschooling, Music Education

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I don’t do many sales posts, but this is definitely a good time for one! Many of us homeschool moms are already making plans for next school year, and that means it’s curriculum shopping season!

Here are some great sales happening this month, from publishers and curriculum providers that I love. A lot of them are focused on Christian classical education, but you may find resources that fit your homeschool goals whether you consider yourself a classical homeschooler or not. Unsure about what that even means? Check out this post.

I’ll start with the most time-sensitive.

Logos Press: 10-40% off and Free Shipping over $250 This sale is now ended.

Logos Press publishes and carries a ton of Christian classical curriculum resources and books. They had this sale through March 31, and they’ve extended it! It looks to me like this sale may only last until Friday (tomorrow), so jump on this one quickly to get 10-40% off and free shipping on orders over $250.

They carry classic books with worldview guides built in, Latin curriculum, Life of Fred math books, Math Mammoth, and much more.

Roman Roads Press: 20-35% off ALL Curriculum and Books, April 1-10 This sale is now ended.

Roman Roads Press also provides fantastic material for Christian classical education at home (for middle grades to grown ups). I’m currently reading The Illiad (and soon The Odyssey) along with the Old Western Culture Parents’ Challenge. This is giving me a chance to enjoy Wes Calihan’s lectures and think about how we might use them in our homeschool. I’ve found them incredibly helpful so far in understanding Homer’s works from a literary and thoroughly Christian perspective. Heads up to conscientious parents: there is some nudity in the art featured in these videos. Just being honest, this is a big part of the consideration going on as far as what my husband and I choose to put in front of our sons. I otherwise love the content.

Roman Roads also offers courses on Poetry (which I have done with my boys), Latin, Logic (currently the lowest price I’ve seen for Introductory Logic!), History, Economics, Calculus (which I’m about to order, per my engineer-husband’s request), and more.

Compass Classroom: ALL Curriculum Discounted, Up to 50% Off, April 12-19! THIS SALE IS ON NOW!

Compass Classroom has so many quality video courses for about age ten and up. We have enjoyed WordUp! The Vocab Show, Visual Latin 1 and 2, and Jonathan Rogers’ Creative Writing–I took his Writing with Scout course on To Kill a Mockingbird a few years ago when he first offered it as a live course. It was fantastic, evaluating literature as both a reader and as a writer. I have Writing with Hobbits planned for my boys to go through soon–and I know they will love it!

This sale doesn’t start until April 12, which means you’ve got time to try out their Premium Membership for ONE MONTH FREE in order to get a fantastic opportunity to evaluate any of the courses you are thinking about purchasing during the sale! They have great sample lessons anyway, but this would allow you to look things over thoroughly–no credit card required to start your one month free trial!

Prodigies Music: April is Month of the Young Child, Get 50% Off Plus Membership, 33% Off Songbook Bundle, AND an Additional 5% Off Your Order with Code KEPT

Prodigies is a colorful and fun way to teach music to children from pre-K to age 12. My boys started doing Prodigies Music Lessons (videos with color-coded desk bells and sometimes a workbook) when they were 7 and 5, and now that they are 13 and 11, I can see how much they have benefited for the long-haul from this playful but theory-packed approach to music education. My boys are obsessed with playing piano, have recently picked up recorder and ukulele, and one day would love to learn bag pipes, too! They not only love music and are doing well in their piano lessons, but they are creative with it, too–something that was intentionally cultivated by the Prodigies Music Curriculum. We didn’t even do the program super religiously, but it has been a blessing to our family! They have several options for how deep you want to go with their curriculum and resources, so that you can choose a plan that suits your needs and your budget.

You can also try Prodigies out with a 7-day free trial on their website. You can also download the My First Songbook pdf for FREE. Feel confident enough in your own musical abilities to do a bit of this yourself? You could purchase the bells and use them with the First Songbook to get your little one started. Scroll down on this page to see what instruments and workbooks they have available in this same color-coded format that helps kids learn quickly! They even have Chromanotes Piano Stick-Ons so you can relate the Prodigies song books directly to your own piano or keyboard.

Don’t forget to use coupon code KEPT to get an additional 5% OFF your entire order–on top of sale prices!

Rainbow Resource Center: Everyday Low Prices and Free Shipping on $50+

If you can’t find what you’re looking for at the sales listed above, head on over to Rainbow Resource Center. They don’t run huge sales, but they are committed to carrying a plethora of homeschool curriculum to suit all different styles. They’ve been serving the homeschool community since 1989, and they have wonderful customer service!

Are you starting to plan and shop for next year? I’m just beginning to think about it beyond the flurry of big-picture ideas floating around in my head. I’ll have an eighth grader next year, so I’d better get on it!

Growing a Love for Music: A Review of the Prodigies Music Lifetime Membership (Plus a Discount Code!)

30 Saturday Sep 2017

Posted by Lauren Scott in Home Education

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Tags

Curriculum Review, Elementary Music, Home Education, homeschooling, Music, Preschool Music, Preschool Prodigies, Prodigies Music

In this review I’ll give a bit of history as to how we decided on the Prodigies Music Program for our kid’s education, a discount code for my readers, and then some examples of how our kids have benefited from the program over the past nine months! This post contains affiliate links, but I’ve been promoting Prodigies to friends long before signing up as an Ambassador–you’ll see some of the reasons why I believe in it so much in this post.

My husband and I both love music. And we love sharing it with out kids. But it’s hard to find the time to introduce them to the basics of music theory with my husband’s busy work schedule and the fact that I’m already teaching them every other subject in our homeschool.

We looked at local general music classes, and probably would have gone that route if we hadn’t found Prodigies. We sampled the videos they made available for free on YouTube, and I was impressed. So impressed that after crunching numbers and comparing our options, we bought the Lifetime Membership for our family.

Here’s why the Prodigies Lifetime Membership beat the local class option hands-down:

We paid one price for the whole family for life–within just one year of weekly local classes for two children, we would have paid the same amount for FAR less instruction. This would be even more economical for a larger family.
We can do music lessons every day in the comfort of our own home–this again ups the amount of instruction and guided practice, allowing kids to go deeper and practice regularly without mom having to muster up the energy or having to waiting on the next class day to roll around.
We have access to all the materials (videos, workbooks, songbooks) both online and as downloadable files for our computer. This means I have an awesome curriculum (and my kids have a fun music teacher!) available any time it fits our needs or schedule.
While I’m sure the local classes are nice, they aren’t using the Prodigies program–which is colorful, engaging, and focuses not only on meaningful play with pitch to train a child’s ears, but also on learning to translate between the color names, number names, letter names, AND solfege names of the notes of the major scale. Most teachers wouldn’t dream that teaching all of this at such early ages is possible. But it is! Mr. Rob does it! And my kids are getting it!
The team at Prodigies Music is constantly adding to their program, which means that the money I put down for our membership goes farther and farther. They now have a complete preschool program (what my kids are working through now), have started publishing lessons in the primary program, have tons of fun supplemental videos in their Melodies series, and are now rolling out lessons for the recorder.

Finally, here’s some of the benefits I’ve seen in my children over the past year that we’ve been using Prodigies.

My kids can translate easily between solfege, color, number, letter names, etc. This is something I never knew how to do despite participating in choir as a kid.
They are learning the names of chords and what notes are used to build them.
My husband can pull out his guitar and the kids can pull out their bells and play together because they’ve memorized the melodies of a handful of songs. It’s a family jam session!
The kids are learning to sing on pitch in a friendly, non-embarrassing environment.
ONE OF THE BEST THINGS I’ve seen so far is that my kids are not intimidated by music. Or any instrument. Though their practice at home so far is only with the desk bells and hand-signs, they have internalized the concept that music is made up of notes–notes which they have learned to call by name. So all they have to do when they walk up to an instrument is figure out where the notes are, and then they can play any of the songs they’ve learned! The boys will eagerly plunk out a melody on a piano whenever one is near–with no fear whatsoever. While at a family member’s house, they spotted a harp and asked how it worked. With no more instruction than “The strings are notes on the scale,” my eight-year-old guessed that the red strings were Cs and began to play the Imperial March from Star Wars. On the harp. When he’d never touched the instrument before. And while some instruments like violin are inherently more difficult to play, my kids have also fearlessly picked them up and guessed at what notes they hear when they scratch away at the strings. Point being:
The pump has been primed (and will continue to as they acquire the ability to read music from their Prodigies lessons) to have such an intuitive understanding of music that when we do sign them up for instrument-specific lessons down the road, they will be able to focus on the mechanics because the understanding will already be there.
Beyond all of this, they are learning to both understand and enjoy music. And when you understand something, it’s a lot easier to love it, and when you love it, it’s a lot easier to want to learn and understand it more. Thus, with Prodigies, our kids are being equipped for a literal lifetime of learning and enjoying music.

I hope this review has been helpful! Check out the Lifetime Membership at the Prodigies site, and don’t forget you can use the code KEPT to get an extra 5% off your Lifetime Membership PLUS 5% off anything in your cart–like the bells, or hard copies of workbooks or songbooks.