Coffee Can Drumming

For the past year I have had the teacher's lounge save me their empty coffee cans and I finally have enough for each of my students. I'm so excited to use these this year for rhythm practice. This week, the 4th graders are reviewing 16th notes, so we are using them to play various rhythm patterns with tika-ti and ti-tika. At first we tried playing them with rhythm sticks, but that got a little too loud for my neighboring teachers. Last time we did it, we used our hands and that worked pretty well. We still might use rhythm sticks, just not with as many students playing at one time. The kids are always on their best behavior when they see the coffee cans out because they know only the quiet students will get to play them!