Submitted by Caryn Mears, Kennewick, Washington
Idea posted November 9, 2004
Here is how I share the beginning rhythms:
I set out four empty chairs. Then, I have students sit in each of the four chairs, and we clap for each beat. I have one student sit out, and we have three beats with a rest somewhere in the middle. Next, I have two students sit out. That way we have two quarter notes and two rests. When I introduce eighth notes, I have two children sit on one chair. The kids get a big kick out of it, and they see that two "people" or "two eighth-notes" fit inside one quarter-note. Another thing I do at this point is to divide the class in half. One group says "ta," and the other group says "ti-ti." In this way they discover that the "ti-ti" fits inside the length of the "ta." When I introduce half-notes, I have one child take up two chairs; and when I do the whole note, one child stretches across all of the chairs, and we clap, "ta-ah-ah-ah." They absolutely love doing sixteenth notes!
When we study Duke Ellington's train rhythm patterns, we have two people share a chair as eighth notes, and then we have two more people sit on their laps. This is where we get to say, "ti-ca, ti-ca." They can visually see that the four people fit inside the space of one beat. It's really quite fun and it is enormously successful for those visual learners.