09/15/2026
Music education belongs in every homeschool—and sometimes, it starts with a recorder.
As an Olympia-based learning community, one of the unique parts of our mission at The Tuned In Academy is serving homeschool families.
In fact, when we first started our organization, one of the reasons we did so was specifically to create more opportunities for homeschool students to receive serious, high-quality music education.
We know families choose homeschooling for all kinds of wonderful and deeply personal reasons, and we absolutely support that choice. But we also knew that for many homeschool families—here and around the country—finding accessible, consistent, and excellent music education could be a challenge.
We wanted to help fill that gap.
Of course, we absolutely love **all** of our students—our homeschoolers, our public-school students, and our adults who are long past their school years!
But one of the really cool things about the Olympia-area homeschool community is that there are organizations that help make enrichment opportunities like music education possible for homeschool families. We've been privileged to work with several of them, and through those partnerships we've met some wonderful families we might never have had the opportunity to meet otherwise.
And just yesterday, we welcomed a brand-new student who came in to learn...
the recorder.
Now, we know the recorder doesn't always get the respect it deserves. 😂
But here's the truth: the recorder can be a beautiful instrument. It's also an excellent first wind instrument. There is so much more to playing it well than simply learning which holes to cover.
Tone. Breath control. Vibrato. Dynamics. Phrasing. Expression.
Those things matter.
And when a student learns to create a beautiful, expressive sound on a recorder, they're building skills that can later transfer beautifully to instruments like the flute, clarinet, saxophone, trumpet, trombone, and others.
And this young man?
He gets it.
Right from the beginning, he was producing beautiful tones and listening carefully to what he was creating. But perhaps our favorite part came at the end of the lesson.
He walked out smiling.😊
And honestly, that's what we're hoping for.
Not just a student who learns an instrument.
Not just a student who learns to read music.
But a student who discovers that making music is something joyful, meaningful, and worth doing well.
So here's to homeschool families. Here's to new students. Here's to beautiful music in unexpected places.
And here's to hoping that little recorder player keeps smiling all week long.
That's what we're here for.
Recorded by Raw Sessions in London, song's called "Pilgrim", writte...
