The Nutcracker

I’m very excited about this week’s unit! And I’m especially excited about our field trip on Friday! A trip to see the Nutcracker ballet! So, I thought we would spend the week learning a little bit about the history of the Nutcracker, ballet, Tchaikovsky’s music, and start learning more about music in general. I will share a few resources that I have found as well.

The girls have both begun taking ballet lessons in the last year and love it! So, I think this will be an especially girly and FUN unit for us to do!

HERE is the unit on homeschool share site. There are several versions to this story – a lot actually! I have about 4 on my shelf and I know there are quite a few more! I hope to compare and contrast this book throughout the week. I have one that is a bit longer that we may use as a chapter book read aloud. We will learn a little bit about the history of ballet this week as well.

Also, during this week we will be learning about Tchaikovsky and his music.

HERE is a great site with information for children on composers and classical music.

While learning about Tchaikovsky, we will be listening to the Classical Kids story called Tchaikovsky Comes to America. If you are familiar with Beethoven Lives Upstairs, this is the same company. Their products are awesome for children! When I taught music at the Christian School last year, we listened to this one on Beethoven and the younger kids as well as the older ones enjoyed listening.

HERE is a nutcracker coloring page.

THIS page also has another nutcracker to color.

And yet another COLORING PAGE.

Check out the craft ideas on the HSS site, I hope to make one of those nutcrackers this week – probably using toilet paper rolls!

And one last idea for you…if you have a Big Lots…I found a cartoon version of the Nutcracker for $2 there over the weekend! Yipee! Perfect timing for our studies this week! (and the voices in this story are even heard-of actors – Keifer Southerland being one of them!)