"A Song for My Sweetart"
This is a lesson idea from the book "Kids Can Compose". I always have one of those giant bags of mixed candy on hand for Bingo prizes and such, and luckily the last bag I bought was FULL of Sweetart candies. The Sweetarts came in packets similar to Smarties, so it was easy to distribute them to each of my groups. Everyone simply got one packet to share.
The 4th graders are just starting the treble clef, so we used this lesson simply to practice the space notes. I would call out a note and they had to put their Sweetart candy on the correct space. I wanted them to also practice putting notes on the staff from left to right so that when we start reading music for recorders they are used to that. I found that several of the kids were just squishing them together in one spot or stacking them vertically, so I had them divide their staff into 4 sections. Then I would say, "notate an A in box 1, a C in box 2", etc. This made things much easier for everyone. After a while, I let them partner up and quiz their partners. The students who already knew the note names were partnered together and allowed to do lines and spaces or use ledger lines.
In 5th grade, each student was partnered up and given a glockenspiel and a cup of Sweetarts. They then had to compose a 4-8 note melody and play it on their instrument. Each group had to perform their melody for me before they could eat their candy.
Giant Beat Strips
This is an idea I got off of Pinterest from www.abbottmusic.blogspot.com . Kindergarten just learned about ta and ti-ti, but we were still reviewing how a ta is one sound and a ti-ti is two. To reinforce this concept and tie in Valentine's Day a little bit, I used giant beat strips with large hearts on them and split the class into 4 groups. Everyone took their shoes off and put them in the middle of the room (this part can get a bit wild!). I then clapped a rhythm pattern and they had to race to made the rhythm on the hearts. A ta was notated with one shoe and a ti-ti with two. It took a while for some of the kids to catch on, but once they did, we were able to cruise through the entire class. Although it was just a tad crazy (and stinky!), it was a LOT of fun!
Racing Heart Rhythm Race (or something catchy like that-I couldn't think of a good name!!)
Last year I cut out a bunch of paper hearts with the intent of using them for a lesson and never did. So this year, I took those hearts and wrote a whole bunch of 4-beat rhythm patterns on them. I designed this to be used with 3rd-5th grade, so the rhythms contained mostly 16th note rhythms (which 3rd grade is working on now) and dotted quarter note rhythms (which 5th grade is working on). There were 2 of each rhythm. I scattered the hearts all over my floor and split the class into 4 teams. I would call out a rhythm and one person from each team had to race to find the correct heart. Since there were 2 of each, two teams could score or one team could get 2 points. The first team to 6 points won. (Side note, I would recommend laminating the hearts. The students tend to get a bit grabby when they get over-excited!). This was a great game and you could make it even harder by only clapping the rhythms and not saying them out loud. I often did that as a tie breaker or for extra points.
Valentine Post Office
I posted about this game last year. It is a game I downloaded from Teachers Pay Teachers and it works great with K and 1st. I grouped my classes into groups of 2 and gave them each a Valentine bag with rhythm cards inside. They take out the cards and I clap or play a rhythm and they have to find it and put it in their bags.
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