Moosicology – Lesson One Introduction to Notes by Lilsa Henriksson-Macauley – The Strawberry Post

A book review of a fun children’s picture book helping to teach children the basic notes of music in a fun way using trains and some clever audio extras.

About Moosicology: Lesson One Introduction to Notes

Title: Moosicology: Lesson One Introduction to Notes (Moosicology Bite-Sized Series #1)
Author: Lilsa Henriksson-Macauley
Publisher: Moosicology
Genre: Children’s picture book, Learning – music
Book format reviewed: Paperback
Sweet Strawberries:

Description:  Moosicology.  The Complete Introduction to Musical Skills & Musical Thinking the fun way!
Recommended by Music & Childhood Experts
Enter the World of Musicology: a unique, neuroscience-based method that teaches Real Music Skills to your child through music, with specifically designed Songs, Stories & Activation tracks accompanied with full audio, as well as a copy of The Grown Up’s Guide.
Lesson One: Introduction to Notes: We introduce the note family of Trains and hear the fun tales with big brother Crotchet and little sister Quaver as they race each other with Mummy Half Note and Daddy Full Note’s encouragement in these fun and educational songs and stories.

*Free copy provided for review…

My review and thoughts on Moosicology: Lesson One Introduction to Notes

This is a fun book and way to introduce kids to the basic notes used in music. Train Quaver is chugging along fast when her brother Crochet comes along. Crochet tries to keep up with Quaver, but he isn’t so fast and can’t chug at the same speed as Quaver, but despite racing each other and Crochet not able to chug as fast as Quaver, the two still arrive at the same time, but why is this? This paperback is filled with glossy pages of some fun illustrations and text.

The book is especially designed to teach kids about the four common musical notes: quaver, crochet, half note and whole note. Weirdly the half note and whole note are never mentioned by their real names, minim and semibreve. This might have been to get across the lesson of the whole and half note but I still would have liked it mentioned somewhere at the end of the book, unless it is in future Musicology books.

The story in the book is a fun one about the two train siblings chugging at their own speeds and yet arriving at the same time and curious how it happened they go to their mummy Half-note to find out. The book has two songs and a story explaining this to children though you have to use the QR code to listen to the music and hear the storytelling as without this the lesson doesn’t make as much impact unless you can hear the individual trains speaking in time with what note they represent. The book then reiterates the speed of notes through another song before finishing with a page for colouring in the different trains/notes and a final page with a certificate which parents can fill in when kids have learned the lesson in the book.

The illustrations in the book are fun and there is some colourful text for each train talking which I liked (though there was an error with the colour of one of Half-note’s speeches) but overall I do like the effort that’s been done to help teach kids the beginning of musical notes. I do think the book does not work well unless you hear the musical tracks which you can download from the website for free (if you buy the book then go through purchasing the download – for free – on the website) via the QR code inside. With the tracks though you can hear the musical notes in their correct timings and the songs are fun and simple too.

Overall it’s a nice book and different way of teaching music. It does the job of getting the message across to kids about the speed of various notes, but I’m not completely sure if it’s the best way to do this as I learned about these notes easily when learning the recorder when I was very young and it was easy to learn without the train story, but it’s a good book and I’m curious to see how this series of books progresses.

What do you think of this book?  Do you know how to play any music instruments?  Let me know what you think in the comments below 🙂