Red Light, Green Light...with a musical twist!

I had lots of "wiggly" homeschoolers in the "Meet the Orchestra" class today, so I knew we needed to do an activity or two outside.  It was supposed to rain all day so I'd planned for a completely indoor class.  With a bit of quick thinking and a few note value cards, I adapted the game of Red Light, Green Light.  When I asked the kids if they'd like to play a musical version, they were super excited!

Unfortunately, when I pulled my camera out to take pictures, it said "low battery" and of course, I had none on hand!  (Ugh!)  So, you'll have to use your imagination!  Here's how I played it with the kids...They all stood in a line and I shuffled through cards, that contained a whole note, dotted half note, half note & quarter note.  When they were ready, I picked a card and yelled out the note and the number of beats.  They could only take steps forward that matched the number of beats in the note - If I said dotted half note, they were able to take 3 steps forward.  Obviously, they tried to take BIG steps.

 At first I had to remind them of the number of beats, but eventually I had them figure it out.  If they went too many steps they had to go back to the beginning line.  Every now and then I would yell "the entire song" which meant they could just run...UNTIL I yelled "Fermata!".  Then they had to freeze!!  They LOVED it.  We played a few rounds and then went back inside.  Wouldn't you know though, through the rest of the class, anytime I said "fermata!", they would freeze and be perfectly quiet! 

Really wishing I had come up with this idea the first week...