Monday, January 23, 2012

A Music Measure of Math


Aside from an appreciation for music, I have no other knowledge of it or possess any talent myself. My son's music teacher’s “tee tee tah” lesson on music notes had my son trying to teach me, though. 

His curiosity became mine too. 

To help him learn the names of the music notes and practice some math, I designed this fun activity.

Download the music measure mat, cheat sheet, and notes/rests cards here.

The objective? See how many different combinations of notes can be used to create a measure of music with a 4/4 time signature.



I made some “note” cards and a cheat sheet that showed all the notes and rests and the number of beats each has.



After cutting the cards and taping together the music measure mat, my son sorted the cards into piles. Then I told him that the top number in the time signature (4/4) told us that each measure of music should have four beats. Each note does not have 1 beat, some have as little as a half beat, others as much as 4 beats.

I told him to fill the measure with notes and rests that added to four beats. He started with the easiest combinations: 1 whole note and then four quarter notes. But they got progressively harder.


I had to explain that two half beats equal one beat (I used an apple cut in half to show how two halves equal one whole). Then, the fun really began – using the eighth notes and eighth rests! More and more cards were laid down.

This was a great way to boost my son’s music vocabulary and work on counting, addition, and fractions. We made LOTS of different combinations of notes and rests that added to four beats. I lost count after he created 13 measures!

36 comments:

  1. This is great! We will be working on fractions next month and this will fit in great! Thanks for reminding me!

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  2. You are SO AWESOMELY CREATIVE!!! We are working our way into keyboard lessons, and this applies beautifully to our future musical endeavors! Thank you, as always, for sharing...

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  3. Awesome idea, thanks for the printable!

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  4. I am a music teacher and have been a hs math teacher this works for ages as young as 2 if you can count to 4 :0). Also a fun challenge. For the older kids try 3/4 5/4 or 6/8 counting. Thanks for sharing!

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  5. How interesting. I am also musically illiterate and hoping that daughter can teach me something soon. I am going to see if I can fit this activity some time this week.

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  6. Such a great idea. Thank you for sharing. :)

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  7. this is a great idea! you could probably make $ by marketing it!!

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  8. This is AWESOME! It reviews and reinforces so many skills! Thanks for the printables too! I love them! Would you be willing to share it at Teach Me Tuesday today? You can link up at http://PreschoolPowolPackets.blogspot.com -- I hope to see you there!

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  9. Stopping by from Teach Me Tuesday....

    Holy Cow! I never thought of using music as a math tool... and I'm a musician!! LOL This is FABULOUS! Both of my children are showing signs of music ability. I am going to have to incorporate this into our math learning! Thank you so much for sharing!! I am inspired!

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  10. Coming from a music teacher: well done! This looks like a lot of fun too :) Thanks!

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  11. Wonderful. I also love how you take detailed pictures. Can't wait to try.

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  12. This looks awesome! Wonderful idea! I can play a piano, but reading music is another challenge in itself. I hope this will help my kids (ahem, myself) learn to read music AND math at the same time! Thank you!

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  13. What a wonderful activity. It covers math and music. He's learning so much about reading music. This is one activity I need to do. I can't read music as well as I should. I've been wanting my daughters to learn the piano and this is just the activity I need to save for when they get a bit older. Very nice.

    -Veronica

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  14. Very creative. This would be a great activity when my daughter gets older. Thanks for sharing. I am also hosting a frugal friday blog hop where people can share their frugal kid activities. Please consider linking up thanks. www.funfrugalmommy.blogspot.com

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  15. I like this a lot. I think even if one is not a well-practised musician, learning how to understand musical vocabulary is so important.

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  16. This is awesome! (Wait, everything you share is, HA!). I pinned it and shared on Facebook :) Thanks so much for linking up with Thrifty Thursday!

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  17. This is great! It's been a long time since I've played music, but my son is asking to take music lessons. I will definitely file this away, because it's a great math lesson too!

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  18. I love it that you are taking time to teach music! I LOVE music and miss having time to be in singing groups! Thanks for linking up to TGIF! Have a GREAT week,
    Beth =-)

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  19. I still love this!! Thank you so much for linking up at Teach Me Tuesday -- I hope we see you again today!

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  20. Amazing! However looking at it is way over my head, I think my husband will have to help the boys with this one. Thanks for sharing at the {Free} Printables Linky Party.

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    Replies
    1. WoW! What a wonderful idea :) We are surely going to try it. The only thing is that I will cut the symbol of the one itself and then plastify it, so we can use it later to learn the different notes. Thanks a lot :)

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  21. Music teacher here too - this looks great, but just needs a set of 8th note pair printables too. I've found that kids of all ages are able to count using 8th note pairs FAR before they figure out dotted quarter/8th note rhythms. Just a tip - I'm planning on using this for my 2-year-old AND my middle school general music classes :)

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  22. This is wonderful! I am a music teacher also and we've been working on rhythm notation, where I clap a rhythm and the kids write (draw) it then when we get to 4 beats, they draw the bar line to complete the measure. This will be a terrific thing for them to use at home!!!! You are amazing! (By the way, my students range from 3 1/2 - 6).

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  23. A friend of mine is a piano teacher, choir director and organist - for the children's choirs, he too uses the tee tee tah stuff (it has a name but I can never remember it! - Kodely or something??). The year my son was in choir with him, he kept talking about Tom liking tea but never really taking it - it sounded odd at first, but he really got the hang of the notes!

    Now we're moving forward with our Montessori music and my son still loves to sight-read with the Kodely (or whatever it's called ;) ). It works!

    :)

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  24. Thanks for sharing! Really great printable!

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  25. I created music methods in which you can stick stickers (notes). Have a look at www.letoutpetitconservatoire.com. It's in French! I also created music notes (teddies). Look at doudounotes.com.
    You can print free images, drawings about music: instruments, composers, notes... from
    http://www.letoutpetitconservatoire.com/ressources-cle-de-sol-letoutpetitconservatoire.htm
    A very useful ressource if you wish to teach music to little ones.

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  26. Thanks! This was so helpful made my teaching of my son a lot easier! Thanks again!

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  27. You're awesome! Thanks for sharing!!

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  28. Agreed on the eight notes doubled are best practiced first. You can extend this to making the references chart in order form whole on down and show through a pie chart how the notes are derived. Whole, cut it in half, quarters, eighth and I have found that the children learn the beginning of fractions without realizing it and get a greater understanding to retain the information taught. Music Educator for 34 years.

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  29. This is fabulous! Going to link to it from my free music resource list.

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  30. Nice way to get a child interested in staff notation. Another possibility you might consider to help kids make the connection of duration to sound while including a visual is piano roll notation. While the math focused staff notation lessons are great for thinking about math - sometimes the connection to sound gets lost. Using music applications like Garageband or the free online Soundation https://soundation.com/ are super fun and can help kids associate sound with duration and even math! Hope that might be helpful to some people! We're developing lots of creative approaches to learning music and the arts on our site http://raisingcreativechildren.net

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  31. Nice one! Thanks, I'll use this in my piano/music lessons :)

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  32. Thank you so much for this fabulous resource. :)

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  33. What about learning the actual names of the notes instead of just the eighth/quarter/half notation?

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  34. early musician were selfish about their music talents. some probably don't want others to learn how to read or play music but you went a step forward and open a new door for people like me who have no cluse about reading notes till now. Thank you. Keep up the good work.

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