Disclosure: I received this product free through the Homeschool Review Crew

Learn About Composers

Byron’s Games

Homeschool Review Crew

Do you want to learn about composers in your homeschool?  How about doing it in a fun way?!  We were very blessed to review one of Byron’s Games last year with the Homeschool Review Crew and jumped at the chance to review another this year.  Maestro Mastery -Explore the Composers will help both you and your children learn about composers. 

About the Game 

Within Maestro Mastery -Explore the Composers you will meet 52 composers from Medieval times up through Contemporary.  The game consists of 2 decks of cards, 1 timeline, and 1 composer poster.  This game is geared towards ages 5 and up though you could help younger kids or partner with them to help them learn by osmosis and also feel like they’re playing. 

Each of the 52 composer cards contains more than just the name of a composer.  You get the chance to learn about composers much more in-depth than that!  Each card contains the name and picture/drawing of the composer, their country of origin, their lifespan so you know when they lived, and what era of music they were part of.  That’s a lot!!

Also, this game is easy to play.  The rules are simple.  It’s basically a matching game.  Put the cards face down on the table.  You can use one or both decks for this.  Then you take turns turning over two cards to make matches.  When a match is made the player reads off the card to everyone else.  Once all the matches are made the player with the most matches wins.  You can also play the player with the most matches from a single era wins too.  

Learning

You’re not just learning about composers with this game, but you’re also working on working your brain.  Somethings this game helps with to work on brain function are below. 

Increased concentration and cognitive function 

Focusing on attention to detail 

Increasing Vocabulary

Maximizing Memory

and so much more.  Think about the card games that worked on matching and memory you did as a child.  Now think about this game.  You are going to be learning so much while using your brain the whole time!

Our Thoughts 

We love the information on the cards.  It’s really great for learning.  I personally even learned things about the composers that I didn’t know and I studied music theory and such for years when I took piano lessons.  This actually shocked me a bit. 

On the above cards you can see the degree of details that are on these cards.  It really gives you quite a bit of information on the composer.  Another thing to note is that the eras on the cards are color coded so that you can easily identify which era the composer is from. 

I have been wanting to do a study on composers with my children and decided to take one composer from the stacks and study them each week.  This means we could play the game weekly too which of course my kids were okay with!

My kids are loving the game.  My four year old is really good at memory games and loves this as well.  He plays by himself and then someone else reads his cards off for him considering he can’t read on his own yet.  I would say that there is no age limit with this game.  I have played it with my kids and my teenagers enjoy playing it as well. 

You can use one or both decks.  We normally have two games going at once with each game getting a deck of cards.  This way more kids can play the game at the same time without everyone trying to get around the same deck.  If just my older kids are playing we do the two decks together so that it is more of a challenge for them. 

There are a few other ways to make this challenging and also more educational that don’t involve you creating unit studies about each of the composers.  

Extra Challenge and Music Options

Use the music!  You can use the music available through Byron’s Games.  In the instructions they tell you how to access the music.  Then when you get a composer match you go and find the composer and listen to their composition.  That is what we did at first.  It gives kids a chance to hear the music and associate it with the composer. 

Now comes the challenge part.  Play music and ask the kids what era the music is from.  You can also give them 3-5 composer cards and then play a piece by one of them and ask the kids to identify which composer the piece is from.  I really like this part as it gives you lots of exposure to good music and helps children identify how the different eras of music differ and are the same as each other. 

This is such a fun idea.  I love that Byron’s Games has made this available so that I didn’t have to go in search of all the composers.  There were several of them that I had never heard of so this is such a fun game and idea!

Learn More

You can learn more about Byron’s Games and the two products they offered for review for members of the Homeschool Review Crew by going to the Main Blog Post where all the reviews are linked up.  Here you can see which product and click on those you wish to read. 

Byron’s Games can also be found on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and YouTube.