Backstage 10

Thank you so much for all your prayers and kind thoughts.  We made it through Hurricane Sandy with some damage to our property and loss of electricity for 5 days, but all-in-all we did well compared to so many of our friends and those around us in Connecticut and surrounding states.  My heart continues to break for so many so our prayers need to continue!

Lessons last week were mostly NOT! but because of the weather policy I have in my studio, I don't have the daunting task of trying to make up 30+ lessons.  If you don't have one yourself, I would strongly advise you to get it in there. 

This week, I have a group lesson with all my students so I've been putting together some games and activities we can do together and I've been trying to make them relate to my studio theme - A Star is Born!  One of the games I put together is really simple, but should prove to be a lot of fun knowing the students I have.  It's call Backstage 10!  Mostly named because I had picked up these cute cut-outs from my local teacher store.

Shaped like backstage passes with a guitar on them means they will really appeal to my 4 guitar students!  There are so many different shapes available out there so if you decide to put this game together, find one that fits your studio the best or is just plain cute!

I plotted out what I wanted to put on the back side before I started.  The supplies needed are cut-outs (I picked up 2 packages of 36 pieces in each), paper and pencil and a marker.  The game is a memory style rhythm game with a bit of a twist!   Students turn over 2 cutouts trying to make up a total of 10 beats.  Each cut-out has anywhere from 1 beat to 9 beats.  I used quarter notes, half notes, dotted half notes, whole notes, eighth notes, quarter rests, half and whole rests and combined them in various ways.

Here's a closer look at what I put together.  I put numbers 1-36 on the left side and then put pairs together on each line, making a total of 72 to match the number of cut-outs I bought.  Each line also added up to 10 so that I made sure I had an even number of sets of 10.  Once this was done, I added the beats to the back of each cut-out. 

Here's a look at them all laid out.  As you can see from the two turned over, there is a combination of 10!  When a student gets the 10 beats with two cut-outs, they keep the set.  The team or individual with the most sets wins!  To make this easier, rather than laying out all the cards at once, you could lay out less and as pairs are made replace the "holes" in the grid with additional cards.  I didn't put a list together of the beats because you most likely will want to tailor the beat combinations to the level of your students.

If you decide to make this for your studio, I would love to see/hear what you did and how your students liked it!  Enjoy!