Working on Steady Beat

Sometimes the simplest idea is the most effective and I certainly discovered that today, thanks to one of my students!  We were working through her lesson and she was having a bit of trouble with her steady beat.  It's something we work on a lot, but today it just wasn't there.  So I told her that we needed to stop and work on it together.  As I was thinking about what to try with her, I must have said something like, "Let's see, what should I use...".  She quickly caught on to that and said, "I know what we can do!".  She grabbed a set of dice, I grabbed the metronome and here's what we worked out together...


She rolled the dice and that became the number of measures we beat out.  I selected the metronome setting and away we went.  At first she had trouble staying with the metronome (she's only part way through her primer book and I hadn't introduced the metronome yet), but slowing she caught on and after the 4th roll, she was beating those rhythms perfectly!  Then I changed metronome setting and magically, she stayed with the beat!  When we stopped this activity and went back to the piano, all was well again!  That steady beat was right on!

This turned out so well that I think it would also be a really great way to introduce the metronome with my students!  Out of the mouth of babes, right?...