Sunday, February 7, 2010

TOS Homeschool Review Crew - Kinderbach



Kinderbach is an online music curriculum for preschoolers and early elementary-aged students (ages 2-7). It looks so cute! All you need to use Kinderbach is your computer and an inexpensive keyboard or piano.  The lessons are very interactive with the children doing things on their own piano and on the computer if you get the online lessons.


Here is a video that you can look at to see more about Kinderbach at Home.  There are more links on the left side on that page that you can check out also. Most importantly there is a KinderBach FAQ that can answer some of your questions and a Free Online Trial. You can try out Kinderbach and see what your kids think.
KinderBach teaches by video. You can sign up for an online membership or order DVD's. Besides the lesssons about notes, the piano, and rhythm, there are great games, puzzles, puppets and music through the PDF downloads.   

  See some samples of the pages you get with the pdf's.

 

This product looks great, but I have to admit that this is one product we did not use. As I said in the first paragraph, it is geared for ages 2-7. My youngest is 13. I would have loved this for my kids when they were younger and will reccommend it, or keep it in mind to buy it, for future grandchildren. I did look at a few of the lessons and I looked at the pdf downloads. 

The program is very thorough and covers many music topics in a way that little kids can understand and in a way that would keep them interested and learning at a pace that is great for their age. The older of the kids ages 6-7 year olds could do the program a little faster than a younger child would. Using the characters to help explain the concepts like black keys and white keys and coloring the fingers helps the kids. You can see a Dodi's house page in the middle of the sample above. I also love the hands-on activities that are included. I really liked the activity with the pictures of Dodi's house that you color, cut out, laminate (if you want), and then stand up behind the black keys on a real piano. What fun! There is even a pdf that you can purchase for Craft and Games Level 1 It is loaded with activities and is just $9.95.  For example: they can make a floor size piano key set up like Karri has in the lessons, then add Dodi's House large size cards to practice what they learned.

The older lessons continue using activities in the pdf's to supplement the online/DVD lessons. Level 6 teaches how to do scales tucking your fingers under or crossing them over depending on if you are going up or down the piano, piano terms like "Fine" and the "Grand Staff", and more complicated patterns and tunes in the songs themselves.

Since I did not really use the program with my kids I am not going to give it a star rating, but if I did give it one from just the little I looked at it, it would be 4 or 5 stars, I am sure.

Year Membership
$95.88 annual or $19.99 monthly
Day Pass
$5.95 for a single day
There are also DVD packages available here.


Since I do not have young chidlren and I did not acutally use this program to teach my boys please check out other TOS Crew members reviews and see what others have to say: TOS Homeschool Crew Review Blog

***Kinderbach provided me with a free subscription to their website so that I could do my review. Though I received this product for free I have given an honest review of it here in this post.

Debbie

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