Rhythm Go Rounds

I have really been having a great time with the Music-Go-Rounds that I received from Music in Motion.  In a previous blog post, I talked about how I used them with vocal activities.  You can read about those activities HERE.  In this post I want to share with you some of the ways I have used them to teach rhythm.  Although these manipulatives are called Music-Go-Rounds, I borrowed the name "Rhythm Go Rounds" from a clever student that dubbed them as such.

As I mentioned in my previous post, Music-Go-Rounds are thin, silicone circles that cling to a variety of surfaces.  They are so much fun to touch!  While working at some of these rhythm stations I had to continually get on to kids that loved playing with them.  I found one student that had folded them and placed them between each of his fingers.  I scolded him, but not until after laughing at him.  I could completely relate!

At this station, I introduced students to the duration relationship between the whole note, half note, quarter note and barred eighth notes by setting the Music-Go-Rounds up in this order.  We clapped through the patterns together and then I left them to create their own patterns.  In the photo below, you can see one of their examples.  This activity gave me the opportunity to work with students in small groups and to differentiate if needed.  This is a cabinet door in my classroom.  It has a smooth surface the the Music-Go-Rounds cling to it nicely.

This is another example from a group that only sort of paid attention.  I appreciate that they were sorting correctly though!

In another activity, we used the Music-Go-Rounds to match the syllables of words with rhythm that could represent it.  After singing "Ode to Composers" from Music K-8 magazine, I thought I would use composer names for this closing activity of the lesson. 

I do several different activities with body percussion from Kindergarten through 6th grade.  Students love to take the opportunity to create with body percussion.  I use the activities in THIS set from my store for composing with body percussion for lower elementary.  For upper elementary, we often transfer our patterns to a body percussion staff.

I used masking tape to create this staff on a dry erase board.  I labelled the staff with "stomp", "pat", "clap" and "snap".  Students arranged rhythms for their small group and the group performed them.  They had such a great time that they didn't realize how much they were reading and performing rhythms.  Teacher win!

There are probably many other ways to do this, but I prefer using the Music-Go-Rounds over dry erase markers.  For some reason, I always have kids that draw on themselves with them.  That makes me crazy.  The Music-Go-Rounds are also such a novel way to keep students engaged too.

After the small groups had a chance to experiment with this station, we created some patterns as a class.  We took turns performing each line, performing them all together and even reading the vertically!  

I hope this post has given you a few new ideas for teaching rhythm.  If you like these ideas PIN THEM for later.