I posted a teaser about this on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook (are you following me?). A music family in my studio recently received some River Stones and we got to play some fun games with them! The idea to use them for musical games came from the mother….isn’t it so wonderful to have music parents who are involved (in a non-overbearing way!)? We decided to call the game “NoteSteps.” I think it’s a cute name!
Here are some of the ideas we came up with:
- One student (or teacher or parent) plays a musical instrument (we called this person the “piano guy”) and the other students step to the beat. This could be done on one stone (stepping in place) or walking from stone to stone.
- “Piano guy” plays. When the tempo gets faster, the steps get faster. When the music gets slower, the steps get slower.
- Students step to the quarter note, half note, whole note, etc. This could be done to music, a metronome, or a steady beat from a human. 🙂
- Stones can be labeled with different note values. When the student stands on that stone, s/he must step that rhythm. You could do this where the student changes stones every measure of four beats. Then, the student standing on the quarter note would take four equal steps in place, the student on the half note would take two steps, etc.
You could use stickers or tape shapes on the floor, pieces of paper taped to the floor, chalk outside, etc. in place of the stones. This would be a fun activity for families to do together as homework or supplemental music practice.
What kind of active music games do you enjoy?
-Barbara
Barbara Fischer runs Fischarper, LLC and loves her job as a harpist and private music educator. She enjoys blogging about various aspects of the music field on fischarper.com/blog. For more music resources, check out the Fischarper store. Find out where you can find Barbara on the interwebs here. And you can sign up to receive Fischarper updates by joining the email list.