So, Mi, La centers

The 2nd graders have been working on So, Mi, and La sight reading this month. In the past, I've done a lot of flashcards, whole group practice at the board, and echo singing, but I've always felt this falls short when it comes to actually applying the skill of reading notes on the staff. I've always loved centers and think they are a great way for student to work independently on skills. I put together 5 centers for the kids to rotate through that would allow them to read the solfege and then actually play it on an instrument and hear what it sounds like. Some of the centers required them to sing the pitches as well. We rotated through all 5 stations and spent about 6 minutes at each station. 

Station 1: Catch the Ladybug- I created several ladybug cards with SML notation on them and then a KEY card. One student sings a pattern from the key and the others have to find the lady bug with the matching notation. Cards were numbered so that students could easily check their answers with the numbered examples on the key. 

 Station 2: Hand Sign coloring page-Since it's close to Thanksgiving, I thought this Color By Hand Sign page would be a good fit. I found this worksheet on the Internet, but to be honest, I can't find it again to tell you where it came from!

Station 3: Composition-Each student has a bell stand with E,G, and A as well as a heart beat strip and the letters S, M, and L (these are Music-Go-Round manipulatives). They can put one or two pitches in each heart (Quarter notes or two-eighths) and then they play it on the bells. Having the bells on the raised bell stand helps them visually see the step and skip difference between the pitches as well as higher and lower.  

 Station 4: Barrel O' Monkeys-I used bulletin board cut-outs for this activity. On the barrel I wrote SML patterns on the staff (just like the lady bug center) and on the monkeys I wrote the letter notation (ex: SS LL S M). Students matched the correct monkey and barrel. They are numbered on the back so students can check their answers.

Station 5: Instruments-I set out 2-3 xylophones/metallophones and a stack of SML flashcards. The students took turns reading the flashcards and then playing the pattern on their instrument.

Solfeg Games

Here are two games I use for practicing our solfeg patterns for So-Mi and So-Mi-Do.


The S-M game uses a pack of ice cream bulletin board cut outs I bought from Amazon. On the ice cream I drew three lines and then drew different S-M patterns on them. They had to match them to the cone that had the matching pattern.

The So-Mi-Do game was very similar, only I used a picture of a fly that I found and I wrote different SMD patterns on those. Then I made copies of my SMD flashcards, shrunk them, and printed them off on colored paper. Working with a partner, the students had to flip over a flashcard and swat the fly that matched the flashcard with a fly swatter. This was a lot of fun!

Eggcellent Melodies

1st graders are spending a lot of time working on so-mi-la right now and the 2nd graders have been studying la-so-mi-do patterns. The week of Easter, I labeled a bunch of plastic eggs with letters to represent these pitches. The students worked in groups of two to create melodies using their eggs. Once they had created a melody, they played it on the glockenspiels. After a few times, I had them combine with another group to make longer melodies.

*This is a modified lesson idea from the book, Kids Can Compose. The book's lesson is focusing on rhythm, but I found it was easy to switch to pitch practice.

*Note: one of my students doesn't celebrate Easter, so I used colored circles instead.

Zoo Pal Solfege

1st graders have just begun talking about So and Mi. We used Zoo Pal plates to compose S-M patterns on a 2-line staff. I simply put two lines of tape on the floor or my FlipForms and gave each group two different animal plates to compose with. This was great for reinforcing the idea of having both on lines or both on spaces. It also worked well to help them remember to space their plates out left to right, not top to bottom; a common mistake made when students first start putting notes on the staff.

So-Mi-La Songs

2nd graders have been spending a lot of time reviewing So, Mi, La this year. We spent the last two weeks composing a SML song. First, we created an 8-beat rhythm pattern using tas and ti-tis. Then we added pitches to those rhythms. Finally, we notated those onto a staff. We drew a treble clef and discovered that our piece was in 2/4 time. We also had to learn about bar lines, so this was a great review project for lots of things!

This was our first real practice putting notes onto a staff, so it took a bit of time for some of the kids to grasp drawing notes on lines and spaces (something I realized I need to spend more time on in 1st grade when we learn about lines and spaces). After they had notated their song onto the staff, I gave each student a glockenspiel to practice their piece. Once everyone was done, they performed their piece on the xylophone for the class. The students loved showing off what they had written!

On a side note, if I could do one thing differently, I think I would have had the staff notation on a separate page. That way, when the students played it on the instruments, they were reading from the staff notation and not the rhythmic notation they had on top.

2nd graders learn to play piano!

We just finished learning our new solfege syllable, Re, and are discovering all sorts of songs with Mi, Re, and Do in them. Two of those songs are "Hot Cross Buns" and "Hop Old Squirrel." Because those two songs are made up of only three notes, we decided they would be very easy to learn on the piano. After going through some piano basics, we were all quickly able to learn these two easy songs on our keyboards. Now everyone can play the piano!