Making Music Memories: rhythms

Showing posts with label rhythms. Show all posts

Wednesday, November 27, 2013

Wishlist Wednesday

Monday and Tuesday Teachers Pay Teachers is having a huge Cyber Monday sale! In honor of this sale, everything in my shop is going to be 20% off, plus Teachers Pay Teachers will take an additional 10% off. This means you will save 28% on everything in my store! It is a great time to put together a wishlist of items. That is why I'm joining Lindsay's & Rebecca's Wishlist Wednesday Linky Parties.

Here is what I currently have on my wishlist:

Lindsay's - Trim the Tree Rhythm Game

This time of year is so crazy, but this is such a cute game that I know I could easily throw in even during Christmas Concert preparation time. It would be a great way to keep rhythms fresh in students minds, while still practicing for the upcoming concerts.

Ink n Little Things - Winter Clip Art

I just love cute clip art and this clip art is darling!

Amy Martin's - Recorder Stations

I read Amy's blog post recently about her recorder stations and the activities she has would be really helpful with some of my beginning recorder players.

I'm also currently working on several Christmas and winter items that I'm hoping to have in my shop by Monday. Definitely stop by and check for them.

Have a Happy Thanksgiving!

Tuesday, October 1, 2013

2/4 Tuesday - Rhythm Practice

For this weeks 2/4 Tuesday I thought I would focus on rhythm practice. This time of year I review the rhythms students already know, plus I start introducing new rhythms. To go along with this I love to have games, activities, and apps to reinforce these concepts. Last year, I shared a game that I created for this purpose called Rhythm Concentration. You can learn more about that game HERE. However, here are a few more resources I have found.

Rhythm Football

This is a fun interactive SMARTboard file that you can get for FREE at TeachersPayTeachers. I found this game last year and my students love it. I have found that any rhythm activity that includes a sport in it is a great way to get boys excited to practice their rhythms. Unfortunately, if you do not have a SMARTboard you will not be able to have access to this file.

Poison Rhythm

This is a simple game and quite easy to adapt to any grade and any rhythms you want to work with. You start by writing four rhythms on the board, as depicted in the picture above. Then I mark one with an 'X' (somtimes I allow the students to pick the poison rhythm instead). The 'x' represents the poison rhythm. I clap one of the four rhythms and students should echo me by clapping the rhythm back. If I clap the poison rhythm they do NOT clap. The game is set up as teacher vs. student, so when I clap the poison rhythm either the students get a point (for not clapping) or I get a point (because they clapped the rhythm - even if it is just one student!). Sometimes I have classes that do not participate or just stop clapping all of the rhythms. When this happens I tell them I get points for them NOT clapping non-poison rhythms as well. This normally solves that problem.

Rhythm Cat

Rhythm Cat is an Ipad App for practicing rhythms. It is actually kind of fun even for a teacher. How it works: Students look at the rhythm and push the green button as they play the rhythm. When they play the rhythms correctly the notes light up green and they get to move on to the next level. If they don't hold the button down at the right time or long enough, etc. the notes turn red and if they miss a lot of notes they do not get to continue on to the next level. (click the picture to find more information about it)

Monkey Drum

Monkey Drum is another Ipad App for rhythm practice. This can be just a cute app for students to create and play with, but how I use it in my classroom is for rhythm practice. At the end of a class I'll pick students to play rhythms on the monkey drum app. After they play the rhythm the monkey will play the rhythm back. This is a great way for me to assess if students can play the rhythms correctly and to assess if other students can HEAR mistakes in a rhythm. It is a very cute free app, so there is no reason not to at least check it out. (click the picture to find more information about it)

Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Outdoor Instruments

As I talked about in my previous post, all my classes at Fairview went outside last week for music class. We had many different activities outside and the students learned a lot!

The Kindergarten and 1st graders were given a task of finding an object in nature that could be used as an instrument. After finding their make shift instruments the Kindergarten students got to share the instrument and play it for the class. I was impressed with the amount of creativity shown. A couple Kindergarteners used pinecones, leaves, sticks, rocks, or a combination of items.

1st grade students filled out a short worksheet to go along with finding their object. This gave them a chance to continue practicing reading and writing skills, as well as, show me what they are learning.

The first part of the worksheet was telling me what their instrument was and drawing a picture of it. After that we figured out how the instrument could make music. I had several ways and each one students tried. As they tried them they would x out the ways that didn't work and circle the ways that did work. (We went one by one as a class so the ones that had more difficulty reading always knew the task.) My 1st graders loved trying to find out the ways their instrument made music. They enjoyed hitting, shaking, scratching, etc. their instrument to try to make noise. I really enjoyed watching them try all the different ways and was SO happy to see them only using their instruments as instruments and not as weapons. (We did talk about that before hand JUST in case.)

At the bottom of the worksheet 1st graders had to come up with a rhythm using quarter notes and eighth notes. I created four boxes and explained that they had to choose either a quarter note or a pair of eighth notes for each box. They could not put BOTH in any of the boxes. All the kids followed the directions! YAY! Finally, each 1st grader got to play their instrument for the class sharing both their rhythm and instrument. It was so much fun!

Here are some of the finished worksheets:

Interested in seeing the worksheet I created. Find it -->here!<---

To finish the day, I always like to share a songtale or story with my Kindergarten - 2nd grade classes. This is part of the routine of my classes and students have come to expect it and know that story time means the end of music class. To go with the theme of being outside in nature I sang the story There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed Some Leaves.

The kids chuckled at the silliness of an old lady swallowing a pumpkin. They also liked guessing what the old lady sneezes out after swallowing all the things she does. What a great way to end the lesson!

Make some musical memories today!

Tuesday, October 16, 2012

Outdoor Music Class!

Last week I decided to take all of my Fairview students outside for music classes. I decided to do this after having a short chat with a 2nd grader who often acts up in my class. He had kind of a rough day about two weeks ago and broke down in tears after music class. I asked him if he was crying because he got in trouble, to which he replied "No! I just really miss my mom!"

Fairview has an outdoor classroom that they refer to as The School Forest. At first, I wasn't sure what we should do outside. It would be easy to just go out there and sing different songs we sing in music class. However, I feel that when you are going to a new environment you should take advantage of it to the best of your abilities.

After much thought I came up with lesson plans for each class. I will introduce the ideas here with a brief description, but I'll also post more details on each project in later blog posts. This way you can get the materials I used for the lessons, as well as, see some pictures. (I don't want to bombard you with a whole week of lessons in one post!)

All my classes had to walk on the forest path in silence. While they did this they were to listen to the sounds of fall. When we reached the outdoor classroom, I then had students share what they heard. We talked about what music was and how the music of fall would be different than the music of winter. They imagined some of the sounds they may hear in the winter rather than the fall. I especially found this activity cute when one of my kindergarteners on the second day of going to the forest told the class that he heard some beautiful music on his walk to the school forest. This was without even being told to listen for music! :)

In Kindergarten and 1st grade students had to find an item in nature that could be used to create music. They then shared these instruments with the class and showed them how to play their instrument. (Read more about outdoor instruments...)

2nd grade was working on a sound effects project out in the school forest. (Read more about sound effect project...)

3rd grade was finishing up their ostinato patterns, so the first day they shared their patterns with the class. The second day they did something similar to what the 4th and 5th graders did. (Read More about the Ostinato Pattern Project...)

4th and 5th graders went out the school forest and sang I Love the Mountains. Afterwards they were asked to write a short reflection on this experience. They were to describe the difference in singing outside versus inside. We then talked about what makes a good reflection and ways to describe the sound of our own singing or of instruments playing, etc. 4th and 5th graders then created their own 2 beat ostinatos with a partner, as well as, a 3 beat ostinato with their partner. Students created and practiced them the first day and then shared them the second day. (Read More about reflections...)

Overall, I really enjoyed taking the kids out for music class. I was surprised by how many of my students, that don't always care for music, were really excited about music since we were going outside. I also noticed that some of my overly rambunctious students were actually really well behaved outside.

Have a musical day!

Thursday, September 27, 2012

Rhythmic Repitition

I decided after our review the first couple weeks that ALL of my classes (mostly 3-5 graders) needed to brush up on their rhythms. I wasn't sure how I was going to do this at first because it really seemed like we needed to go back to basics on this. I noticed the most difficult part for students was remembering, which note is which and how many beats it gets.

Solution? New rhythm game using quarter notes, quarter rests, and eighth notes. Once students get good at the game I'll add in other harder rhythms and hopefully get us back onto track. I call this new rhythm game Rhythmic Concentration. It was based off of a music concentration that many of you probably have heard about.

Here is how it works:

Everyone in the class sits in a circle on the floor.

Each student is given a basic rhythm that was written on an index card. (I used only quarter notes, quarter rests, and eighth notes, however you could add in other rhythms your students know)

I then put a piece of tape or something to mark the 'beginning/end' of the circle. The person on the right of the marker is #1. The goal of the game is to be #1 at the end of the game.

The #1 person claps their rhythm and then #2 claps their rhythm immediately after. This continues all the way around the circle. During the first round, I normally just let them practice their rhythm. However, after that it gets harder.

Students continue clapping their rhythms as they continue around the circle. When someone misses their turn or hesitates that student has to go to the end (to the left of the marker). Their rhythm stays where it is and then students fill in the spaces. For example: if #5 of #10 misses their turn #10 shifts to #9; #9 shifts to #8; #8 shifts to #7; #7 shifts to #6; #6 shifts to #5; and #5 shifts to #10!

For those visual learners like myself, a model of the switch!:

After that it gets even more difficult. I start sending people to the end of the circle for clapping the wrong rhythm, not doing it in beat, and I have even added the metronome for some of my older students and they have to stay in beat.

My students really seem to like it. What I like most about it is it is fast paced, so those that get frustrated with waiting for everyone to get a turn don't feel that way during this game. I also like it because they are practicing their rhythms without feeling like they are practicing rhythms!

If you try this out, please let me know how it goes or any changes you made to make the game run smoother! Also feel free to ask me questions about it, I'll do my best to answer them. Have fun!

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