Less than $5 1st Grade Music Composition Activities

Based off the hit Windows 3.11 game we all knew and loved, Rhythm Sweeper is a progressive game where one slip can end you up on the dreaded mine! This will have your kids reading and mastering rhythms in NO TIME! Students will see a grid of 40 squares on the home page. Each square contains either a link to a rhythm.... or a mine :) I select one student at a time to pick a number. I'll then click on the number and it'll advance to the designated slide. If it's a rhythm, we add that rhythm to the Building Board on the home page. The teacher will click "Back to Game and Building Board" and put the rhythm they just received on the board. As for the rhythms they earned, you can cut out rhythms, write them in dry erase, or have a student keep tabs on the side. Students will now say, sing, or play the rhythm back. Then we repeat! See how it gets progressive? ;) ...until the mine! There are 5 mines in each game, and once the mine is hit, it's GAME OVER! At the end, you can tally up how many beats the class amassed (which is great if you can allow student to add it up as the game has half, quarter, and pairs of eighth notes). Compete against other classes, or themselves! There are 10 files in the pack and each one is completely different (all the rhythms are mixed up and of course, so are the mines) Have fun with this! I keep lively music in the background and have the kids on lummi sticks to play the rhythms back. Let me know if you have any questions by leaving a comment!

Are you as hungry as I am? Let's eat! Identify rhythms in proper nouns with this fun activity. Students will see a food (or foods!) and their corresponding word (or words!) and given two plates on each slide. Have the students identify the syllables in the food and match it to either rhythm on plate number 1 or plate number 2. After kids lock in their answer, advance the slide and reveal the answer! Most are eighth and quarter note rhythms, but some have eighth note triplets and 4 sixteenths group in the examples You can also play it as an assessment and have kids work individual or in teams. There's a powerpoint and PDF included in this package and there are 13 sets of foods go through and can last up to 30-45 minutes depending on what pace you go in the activity. Have a great time and of course, BON APPETITE!

We know percussion instruments are anything that you either hit, shake, or scrape, but how well do you know them? Want to see how well your kids can identify which instruments are which? Try "Pitch Perfect 2!" where a musical example will be played of a pitched percussion percussion instrument. Students will see three different instruments and will have to select one of the instruments they think matches the musical example. On the following slide will be the answer! In this 9 question game, you can play this any way you want -- boys vs girls, team vs team, individually, or have students write answers down on whiteboards or even come up to the board to interact with the powerpoint. Have a great time with this and leave a comment below if you have any questions!

Was that Presto or Largo? Staccato or Tenuto? Forte or Piano? Use "Who am I" to reinforce the music terminology you've been working on in your class! After a brief review, 6 musical examples will be played with all examples ascribing to either Presto or Largo, Staccato or Tenuto, and Forte or Piano. Students can do this in a variety of ways: -- On whiteboards and dry erase markers -- Through collaborative grouping or partner activity (using pre-cut cards as an idea -- On a SMARTboard or brightlink -- As a race (maybe boys vs girls, side A vs side B) After the example is played, you can advance the slide in the powerpoint to reveal the answer! If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to leave a comment in the Q&A or email me at jasonlitt@gmail.com!

Got a box full of percussion instruments? Work on rhythm reading together with the kids in creative fashions! In "Out of the Box!", 4 separate lines hold 4 different classroom instruments -- tambourines, rhythm sticks, hand drums, and maracas. These instruments are all assigned different 4 beat rhythms and focus on quarter notes, quarter rests, eighth notes, and more techniques throughout the presentation. To get everybody playing, shaking, and grooving, I place four stations throughout the room filled with the associated instrument. I then have a group of students rotate through the instruments throughout the activity so they can all get a feel of each instrument (no more "you get what you get, and you don't throw a fit...") Win-win! You can run in the way you wish! You can have the students perform an ostinato by repeating the 4 beat measure, or have them read it in a canon, or just do it all together as suggested! Or... you can have students write their own composition if you have an interactive whiteboard! How cool! Included are the powerpoint file (completely editable and expandable with images embedded in) and PDF file as a static presentation. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to leave them. Have a great time!

Working on aural theory with your kids? With "Rhythm Mixup" students shuffle up notecards with quarter notes, 2-beamed eighth notes, half notes, and quarter rests to reflect the musical example being played! We start off the first lesson (level 1) with a brief overview of rhythm from Quaver's Marvelous World of Music, and then head right into rhythm mixup. Students will lay out their notation cards (you can either print these out or have the students draw them on a whiteboard, etc), and then a musical example will be played. Students will have to put the notes in the order that they hear the music example -- hence, the "mixup"! Level 2, goes into quarter rests and the students will have to place it appropriately (hint: it's never at the beginning or end of the phrase!) :) Students identify rhythms upon hearing them and use their aural skills to dictate where each rhythm is placed. Make sure to play these several times, especially for the younger ones so they can check their work! Designed in Powerpoint 2007, all animations and transitions should work on machines that support it. A file is included for instructions on how to install fonts. If you have any questions or concerns, please don't hesitate to contact me. Have fun!

For your printouts and powerpoints, this pack of notation has everything -- Wholes, Halves, Quarters, Eighths, and Sixteenths. The notation is vectorized and transparent, so it will fit alongside any background in powerpoint There are word files with notation templates included as well, if you'd like to print multiple of one note You can use these to make flash cards, rhythm building, and much more!

A great way to work on expressive movement with your kids is through HAPPY FEET!

In this lesson, students will hear a 4 minute and 32 second compilation of classical music, Edvard Grieg, John Philip Sousa, Dmitri Shostakovich, and more! Each piece will be played for a segment of time and while being played students will mimic the tempo by showing expressive body movement

• If students hear FAST music, they run as fast as you can in place!
• If students hear SLOW music, try a slo-mo movement in place!
• If students hear MODERATE speed, try marching in place

Of course, as the music teacher you can tailor this however you like, but with social distancing in our classroom at this juncture, the motions are preferable the way they are built :)

In between each segment there may be a slight pause which students will "freeze" in time. Keep the kids' attention by saying if they moving during the silence, they're OUT! ;)

Have a great time and perform this however you wish!

In BoomBox, students will see a series of 8 to 12 boxes with corresponding boomwhacker colors filled in each box. When played, the teacher will count off the students to read down the Boomwhacker boxes from left to right, line by line.

Teachers can use a laser pointer, point with a cursor, or even have kids read by themselves from the beginning to the end.

In this resource, there are 3 levels

• Eight Beat Patterns
• Eight Beat Patterns with Quarter Notes
• Twelve Beat Patterns (with Quarter Notes)

There are twenty five (25) exercises meant to get your kids booming right along! Included in this resource are the powerpoint, PDF, and percussive background tracks from MM 90 - MM 120.

Enjoy!

Simple simple songs for your primary classes in Boom Along Songs! This powerpoint is pretty much start slideshow AND GO! Animations have been previously set so the teacher advances the slide and the arrows indicate which note to be played. No more pointing to the screen and reaching across the projector -- it will automatically do it for you as you advance the slide! Best part -- take it at your own tempo. It's like the old sing-a-long songs... pretty much fool proof! Enjoy these arrangements of This Old Man Go Tell Aunt Rhodie Mary Had a Little Lamb Twinkle Twinkle Little Star Ode to Joy Have fun!

A time tested rhythm builder in the elementary classroom are popsicle sticks, and this activity, "Stick it to Rhythm!" will reinforce quarter and eighth note rhythms. After a brief review on quarter and eighth note rhythms, students are allocated a set of popsicle sticks. After they make space for themselves on the floor, the teacher will play each example (8 in this pack!) and students have to dictate the rhythm using their popsicle sticks (don't worry, instructions on how to do eighth and quarter notes are embedded in the powerpoint) After letting the students decipher the rhythm, the teacher advances the slide to find out the correct rhythm played in the example. This works great for your youngest grades and all examples are MM 95bpm and under. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to leave it in the Q&A section or email me at jasonlitt@gmail.com!

We reinforce tons of Sol-Mi patterns in early elementary music. How about the kids dictate it through Sol-Fish? Each student receives a "Fishing for Solfege" printout which is a fish bowl with 2 spaces - the top space reserved for the SOL and the bottom space reserved for the MI Ten examples will be played and students will have to decipher where the sol's and mi's are after listening to them. They do this by putting bingo chips on the Sol or Mi spaces. After students lock in their guess, advance the slide to reveal the answer! You may do this through the printouts, or you can make it an interactive game with your whiteboard, the possibilities are endless! All sound files are embedded in, so you'll need to manually click each "speaker" icon to play each example. Have a great time with this, and let me know if you have any questions or concerns!