Maestro Classics: Stories in Music {Review}

1. Expand listening and musical horizons ~ listening to complex musical patterns has been shown to stimulate brain development.
2. Develop listening skills and accumulate musical memories. Each CD provides background information on the various composers, the classical work, historical information and a little booklet for children to read through.
3. Encourage children and adults to listen to music together ~ listening is becoming a lost art…and these CD’s make it fun.

We received The Tortoise and the Hare Set {$16.98} to listen to and review. Each Stories in Music set includes a CD, story, activity booklet and extra tracks. Our CD had 7 tracks on it {53 minutes}:

1. The Tortoise and the Hare ~ a story read by Yanu and music by the London Philharmonic Orchestra
2. About the Story
3. Pretzel Vendor of Paris Song
4. About the Music
5. Now that You Know a Little More…
6. Prepare to Perform
7. Pretzel Vendor of Paris Sing-Along {Accompaniment Only}

Maestro Classics offers quite a few stories in the series: Casey at Bat, The Story of Swan Lake, Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel, Peter and the Wolf, Juanita the Spanish Lobster, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, and The Tortoise and the Hare. Each CD set is $16.98 or 3 for $45.

On the site you can listen to samples of the CD’s before you purchase them and also download lesson plans to use along with Mike Mulligan and Casey at Bat. The website also offers answers to the questions in the activity books.

Our kids really enjoy classical music and stories, so this was a big hit in our house! Listening time for us comes while we are traveling in the car or sitting at the table eating and we enjoyed listening to the story as it was set to music ~ enough that we are going to request that our library order the CD sets! If you’d like more information on Maestro Classics or are interested in purchasing some of their CD sets, visit their site and have fun browsing!