Three Things {Rhythm game, making instruments, and a book}

Today, I’m reviving my "Three Things" linky party, in which I blog about three things that worked for my and my students this week. If you are a music blogger, and would like to link up with your three things, see the directions at the end of this post. Thanks to Whimsy Workshop Teaching, Kimberly Geswein fonts, and Jax and Jake for the cute clip art and fonts!

#1: Memorizing Rhythm

My fifth graders are practicing syncopa right now (or eighth/ quarter/ eighth), and one of the songs they are using is "Oboshinotentoten." You can find the music notation here, and here is a video of the game:

After we played the game, I had the rhythm written on the board, and had students sing the song on rhythm syllables. Then we memorized 4 beats at a time (I erased the rhythm as we went) until the whole song was memorized! This was a quick and fun way to practice syncopa AND improve musical memory!

#2: Making instruments with household items

My third graders are learning about the Science of Sound right now, using this unit that I created with my friend Matt:

After we talked about vibration, volume, size and pitch, and how sound travels, I gave students a lot of different household items, like toilet paper rolls, plastic looms, rubber bands, and beads, and had them create an instrument and then decide what was vibrating to create the sound! The kids loved this and so did I...it was messy and loud but they learned so much, and created some really awesome instruments! Here are a few pictures:

#3: All the pretty little horses

With my first graders, I sang this book:

It's such a beautiful song (and one I've sung to my own daughters for years!) After I sung it, I asked them what kind of song it was, and we had a great discussion about why we sing lullabies, who can sing a lullaby, and other lullabies that we've heard. It's a really calming song, so it's a great way to end the lesson!

Those are my three activities for this week! If you are a music blogger and would like to link up to post about three things this week, here are the directions: 

• Save the linky image above and link it back to this blog post.
• Blog about three things that worked really well for your students this past week...songs/activities that were magical, engaging, had them begging for more, etc.! Please limit any mentions of your own products to only one of the three activities.
• Add your blog post by clicking the button below.

I'll leave the linky open until April 3, since I have spring break next week, and some of you may be on spring break now. :)

If you aren't a music blogger and would like to tell us about activities that worked for you, please comment below!

An InLinkz Link-up