Category: Music Portfolio

Pitch

Pitch Activities:

• Sing low pitches and high pitches to your students. Low pitches can be the vroom of a car or the mooing of a cow. High pitches can be a bird tweet or a mouse squeak. Ask your students to listen and see if they can identify which sounds are low in pitch or high in pitch.
• Students sing a song or repeat after me as a group, while you state what pitch it will be in, “Sing Mary had a little lamb in a high pitch” Sing rock-a-bye baby in a low pitch” etc you can make it silly to get kids into it.
• Musical Glasses. Gather about 5-10 jars or glasses and add water to each at different levels. use a spoon or other type of hard utensil and tap the side to make a noise ( a student can be called up to demonstrate. Explain that the high pitches have less water and lower have more. *add some food colouring to make it more fun*
• Blowing into Bottles. Same as musical glasses but with glass bottles and blow into them. Use anti bacterial wipes to clean the tops for multi student use.
• Call and Respond. Sing a few sentences of a song and have the students sing it back in the same pitch.
• Solfege. Together as a class after the teacher and or individually sang through a draw or teacher selection.
• Fairies and Monsters. Teacher sings or plays note on a piano or guitar, students identify if the pitch is high or low. If high, students will try and sing the tone while they jump up and “fly like a fairy” and if its low the kids get down onto the floor, sing the tone and move around like a monster

Rhythm Activities:

• Pass the Plate-Supplies and set up Paper Plates with written rhythm patterns on the back one plate will have only a star on it.

Each student stands or sits in a circle and has one plate in hand, teacher plays music or students sing a song they all know and pass the plate to the person beside them in whichever direction the instructor chooses.

Once the music stops the student with the star picks another student from the circle and that student will read the rhythm on their plate, next, all students will clap the rhythm that’s written on said students plate together. Once that plate has been done, take it out of the circle before beginning to pass along the next round.

Repeat the rounds, passing the plates until you have only one plate left

Adaptations for older grades: Students can use other surfaces or instruments to play the rhythms. Make the rhythm patterns more complex as the students gain more knowledge.

• Extra Beat, Take a Seat, Students play the first rhythm. We like to do it with rhythm sticks, but you can play with drums or just with your hands. With rhythm sticks, down means tap the floor and up means tap together.

(With hands, you “pat and clap”) 2. Once you have practiced the rhythm, have the kids play it three times and three times only. If they make an extra beat (AKA if they start to play a fourth time), then they are out– they put their sticks out of reach or sit down. 3.

The remaining students continue to try until everyone gets it right. 4. Once everyone gets it right, the round is over. Everyone comes back in and play it 5 times. 5. The game continues, moving up by odds until you get to 9. 6. Once you get 9 right, I like to do a challenge and have the kids play it with their eyes closed. We only do this one time no matter how much of a disaster it is. 7. Then you move onto the level 2 rhythm and the game continues. Beat ideas linked to this exercise.

Kindergarten and up with adaptations

Beat Activities:

• Song Cubes- Supplies and set up Two Cubes (one- sides of gesture, two- song) Kindergarten-grade 2

Each side of cube one has a gesture to use exampling the beat to a song ie clapping, rhythm sticks, hands, lap etc.

Students will sit in a circle or stand and one student will toss the cubes, what ever the two facing up sides say is the actions all the students must take together as a group.

Example: cube 1 says clap, cube 2 says bingo, children will clap their hands together as a group keeping on beat to the song as they sing- “There was a farmer had a dog…….”

Students will each take a turn going the circle.

Adaptations for older grades: instead of students rolling the dice for songs, teacher will play songs children are familiar with and like (mainstream, appropriate pop etc) and student will use gesture to keep the beat.

Kindergarten and up with adaptations

Warm Up’s:

Singing rounds: Split the class into two or three groups all facing each other. Do rounds of singing, begin with the first group singing and others stay quiet, teacher moves around pointing and singing indicating that the next group starts singing from the beginning and so on and so on. Songs to consider for this exercise, Fish and Chips and Vinegar, Bottle of Pop, Don’t Throw your Junk, London Bridge is Falling Down, etc