Today was the day I introduced my 1st graders to ta and ti-ti. I used the terms in Kindergarten, but just said the terms, never discussed them. We're learning a song game called "Here We Sit" and we've already talked about melodic direction. The song only uses so and mi patterns and we found out which words we sing high and which words we sing low. Today we started rhythmic dictation. I love using the popsicle sticks, because a) I always have a huge resource of them from Kdg. teachers and b) they are so easy to manipulate for little hands.
We sang each line of the four from the song and worked out the pattern together on the first two. The last two lines of the song, they were on their own. They also had the revelation that the rhythmic pattern was the same for the 2nd, 3rd and 4th lines of the song.
Then, we took the ta ti-ti pattern a step forward with the noodle notes. Cut up noodle notes get strung on rope in the pattern. They worked in groups to string the pattern of the whole song. We didn't get it completed before time was up, but we'll finish it next time and then on to the game.
It was a very productive 1st grade day.
