Ice Cream Improvisations

The 1st graders have been talking about how melodies can move up, down, or stay the same. After talking about that we discussed improvising, and how we can make up our own melody as long as we form some sort of plan about how we want our music to move: up, down, or stay the same. I found a great flipchart on Promethean Planet created by Rebecca Dennis titled "One For Ice Cream".  While we were improvising we had to follow 3 rules. Rule 1: We could only use the notes CDEG. Rule 2: We all had to follow the same rhythm. We used flavors of ice cream to create an 8-beat rhythmic pattern (ex: chocolate, rocky road, chocolate, mint). Rule 3: We always ended with C (and mint).

At first a few students were a bit nervous about playing because they were afraid it wouldn't sound good. I stressed that the fun part about improvising is that you can never be wrong! It's your creation. After that, they all had a blast and enjoyed coming up with new, creative ways to improvise their melodies.