Blue Belt - Frog in the MIddle

This has been a crazy week! Report cards are due soon, I've had kids coming in to finish up Recorder Karate Belts and GPS tasks, and on top of it all my sister had her baby one month early (two days before the shower my Mom and I were planning for her!) Life is good!

"Frog in the Middle" is one of the first songs that my students learn that contains eighth notes. I've noticed that my intermediate students have a lot of difficulty with rhythm, even simple patterns, so I knew that we'd need to experience the rhythm for this song in different ways.

Rhythm in the Feet

For this activity I matched tas with "walk" and tis with "run". As the students entered the Music Room we formed a line and I led them in this chant, while moving our feet in rhythm:

Walk, walk, run-run, walk

I put the rhythms from "Frog in the Middle" up on the Smartboard and explained that we say "walk" for all the tas and "run" for all the tis". We practiced just saying the rhythms using "walk" and "run" and then we put the rhythm in our feet and moved around the room. We ended up doing all four rhythm patterns in a row.

Rhythm Instruments

I split the class into two groups and gave half of them some egg shakers and the other half castanets. We played "Frog in the Middle" with the eggs playing all the ti-tis and the castanets playing all the tas. Then we switched parts. After, we all played every rhythm together.

Moving to Recorders

Once we were confident with the rhythm we took out the recorders and the students played the rhythm on "D" only and then with the correct notes.