Let's Play in the Snow! Rhythm finding activities

"Let's Play in the Snow" from Jump Right In is a well-loved song for my students at this time of year!

 My 1st graders use it to create different movements based on different winter clothes they could put on (scarf, hat, snowpants, etc.), and once they know the song, they practice audiating parts or all of it!

They also pretend to build a snowman, echoing triple meter patterns or singing the resting tone as they put new pieces of the snowman on.

My 3rd graders use these files to practice finding rhythms in the song, doing the 3rd grade version of rhythmic dictation for some of these trickier rhythms!

File 1:  Powerpoint with rhythms for them to read first, then rhythms to find in the lyrics of the song.  This is their first introduction to reading quarter-eighth rhythms in 6/8 (DU-DI).

File 2:  SMART board file for them to practice dragging some of the rhythms to where they go as a class.

File 3:  Small group work where the kids take the cut-out rhythms and place them where they go in the song.  I laminated the paper and the cut-out rhythms so we could reuse them, but you also could have the kids cut and glue if you wanted.

All 3 files are here!  Enjoy!!!

New hello song! Phrygian 6/8 with individual response!

A new hello song!  Activities to do with the song:

• Change "second graders" to a name of a different student every time, and the student sings on 5-1 "I'm fine!" or "I'm great!" etc. based on how they're doing that day
• Take a walk to the beat and wave to people as you pass by, using "everyone" instead of a name or instead of "second graders", stopping at someone different every time the song ends.
• Use the song as a name game, learning the name of someone you don't know in between repetitions, and then singing the song to that person with their name in the song the next time through.
• Do a movement as a team and sing the song with 1 or 3 kids' names.
• Repeat the generic version with waving as you find a new friend, then repeat.

Locrian Jam song!

This song works well with movement activities. Students explore Laban efforts around the room in self-space after spinning our "movement spinner." Another activity for the song: A student with a sign that has Macrobeat written on one side and Microbeat on the other turns the sign to whatever beat they want the class to move to, switching every 4-8 beats. This is also a fun song to have students try snapping on beats 2 and 4, or for students to have a partner that they share a rhythm stick with, swaying side to side or back and forth on macrobeats or microbeats, with each student holding one end of the rhythm stick.


2017 addition: 
Here is an optional B section that you could use for activities such as circle dances or Laban movement opposites! Still swung. :)

Shake the Papaya Down: Visual, Chord root rhythm writing worksheet, and Garage Band projects

Lyrics and chord roots visual

Shake the Papaya Down lyrics and chord roots visual: you can download the free and editable Microsoft Word is here.

Shake the Papaya Down chord root rhythm worksheet: you can download the PDF for free here.

This is a great song for upper elementary because it has 3 partner songs, and the chord roots have I IV V I. You can have students sing the chord roots, label them as tonic, subdominant, and dominant, improvise rhythms over the chord roots, and even improvise with the chord tones.  After my 4th graders did their chord root rhythm composition, they worked with partners on a Garage Band project where they picked an instrument to play the chords, and they recorded themselves singing the partner  songs and chord root ostinato they composed.

Video of 2nd graders reading triple meter rhythms

Students are reading rhythms from the St. Patrick's Day shamrocks that are posted on this blog!

Shamrock triple meter rhythms to read!

See here for shamrocks with 6/8 rhythms!  They are all macrobeat/microbeat rhythms, including all of 3 patterns from the first triple meter LSA.

Print on green paper and laminate!  Here's what my 2nd graders did with the shamrocks this year:

• They read the patterns together by the SMART board first, then they went to stand in the circle and I spread the shamrocks out around the circle. 

• You can use any triple meter Irish song with this activity. We used "Leprechaun, Dance for Me" changing the words so they said, "Look at the shamrock, what do you see? Leprechaun, leprechaun, read for me."  During the song, the students did a real Irish dance movement (hop-step,step,step, hop-step,step,step) to move counterclockwise in the circle.

• When the A section with words ended, students stopped the movement around the circle. While the B section without words was going, students looked at the shamrock closest to where they were standing and audiated their rhythm. When the song was over, I would chant one of the rhythms.  If that was the rhythm on a shamrock a student was standing closest to, their job was to repeat the rhythm.  Hold up the shamrock and ask the class if they agree with how those students read the rhythm.  Repeat until all rhythms have been read!

Solfege Readers for Lowell Mason's Oh, Music

I'm doing basic sight singing with my 4th-5th grade choir. These readers takes a simplified version of each line of the song "Oh, Music" by Lowell Mason and gradually make the sight singing more like the real line of the song until singers can read the full line on solfege. Here is the song if you need to reference it.

Here is the reader for the first line:

Line 1:
Get the free PDF version here.
Get the free Noteflight notation (which you can copy to your Noteflight account and edit) here.


Here is the reader for the second line:

Line 2:
Get the free PDF version here.
Get the free Noteflight notation (which you can copy to your Noteflight account and edit) here.



Here is the reader for the final line:

Line 3:
Get the free PDF version here.
Get the free Noteflight notation (which you can copy to your Noteflight account and edit) here.


"Oh, Music" is also a good song to have your students work on tonic and dominant chord tone harmonies, and is of course a 3-part round. So many possibilities!