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...
3 comments:
Cute idea! Will definately use with my pre-readers and primer level students. Thanks
Fun! I love the end when you shared that even after the game when you would say Fermata they would stop and be quiet. Love that! :)
Hehe, I like when you say "Fermata" and use musical terms to stop the children. Great idea!
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