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Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Twister Hopscotch

A few months back, I ran across this game at a local Walmart and because the box was damaged, I got it for 1/2 price!  None of the contents were damaged and it included a mesh bag that holds everything so I didn't need the box anyway!  I altered the spinner included in the game and it has become a HUGE hit in my Pre-Piano camps.  To change it up, I simply put Avery circle labels over the circles on the spinner and added whole, half, dotted half and quarter notes on them. 

The circles come with connectors so you can make any configuration you want!  At the last camp, I put them together in somewhat of a line and the kids moved back and forth through them by matching their moves to the number of beats of the note determined by the spinner.


Here's a couple of my campers (Emily and Reese) working their way through!  I will say that this has turned about to be one of the best ways to help them remember note values!  Learning and movement are a fantastic combination!



















By simply using another type of spinner or even a set of flashcards, this would be fun when used to test terminology, note identification, or even the musical alphabet.  There are loads of possiblities!

9 comments:

Jenny Bay said...

What a great idea! Thanks for sharing!

Laura Lowe said...

OMG, we gave a child this game as a b-day present! Gotta go get another one now!

Piano Lessons and KiddyKeys with Rachel said...

Love this idea! Where did you get the circles?

Sheryl said...

The circles are part of the Twister Hopscotch game. I found the game at a local Walmart and I know it's available on-line.

Natalie said...

What rules did you have for this game? Did they just race to the end going by the note value? I think it's a great idea! Thanks for sharing!!

Laurel said...

Really cool idea for a game, but I think I'm missing something... how do they know how far to move? Is that based on note values? Or does it tell them to go to the next red spot? And you said they move back and forth... wouldn't it only be one way? I haven't played the real Twister Hopscotch, so maybe that's why I don't understand, but I was just wondering about the players' movement. Thanks!

Ms. Tonya said...

Sheryl,
I love this game and have been playing it with my students. I wanted to post the idea on my blog and link it back to you as the original creator. My blog is www.stringskeysandmelodies.blogspot.com
You can contact me at dirksen.tonya@gmail.com
Thanks,
Tonya

Linda said...

Fantastic idea :)

Anonymous said...

I think you could use this with bean bags, too. Slip papers with note values beneath the circle so the kids can see the notes and you can try to toss bean bags into the circles to rack up points. The team with the most points wins. I found one for $10 via Facebook Marketplace. It cost approx. $8 to send to me and I just got it today. I substitute teach, so I was worried it would be too heavy to carry to school, but it's very light. I think it'll work just fine! I was looking for something like dry/erase circles so I could change what's on the circles any time I want to do so. All I could find were large circles. I'll swing by the office supply store sometime during the holidays and see what I can find. Now if I could just think of some way to use them for the symphony flashcards I bought. Maybe give a value to each card and have the kids id the instrument, tell what family it's in, and then move forward the # of steps equaling the value of that card. The cards are laminated and blank on one side so I could write values on the back of them.