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Teaching elementary music? Here are some ideas for using elementary body percussion activities to help your students feel the beat.
One of the most fun things I like to do with my elementary music students is body percussion. In this post I’m sharing some easy to do elementary music body percussion activities you can do with just a drum.
I love to get those little bodies moving to the music right away!
I’ve written a couple other posts about this topic. You can dive deeper into the “why’s” and “how’s” in this article.
Fun Body Percussion Activities
In this post I’m sharing some body percussion activity ideas you can use with the things you’ve got in your preschool or elementary music classroom.
I like to use a hand drum for this activity.
Try using only one action and vary the TEMPO and the DYNAMICS of the beat.
Let your students figure out what to do!
Then, I DO use the clap, pat, snap or stomp words after we try the experiment.
With upper grades I will use directional words too like:
You get the idea!
Use a Google Slides presentation and put those phrases in each slide.
Then you can have it ready to go anytime!
Or, SUBSCRIBE and get the MOVE TO THE BEAT Slide Presentation Freebie
I don’t worry about how correctly the students do the actions if they are trying.
If they can’t snap-then I have them “brush” their fingers across the thumb or just tap them together.
I don’t worry if they can’t keep the beat.
I do want them to participate.
And YES! I want them to have fun.
I also want the activity to have some spontaneity to it too. And I will add in silly actions like Pat your belly, stomp on one foot, sit down and pat your knees, stand up and jump on the beat. You can even have them “laugh” or “cry” on the beat!
No matter what, I really do want them to have fun- and it keeps me in shape too!
Elementary music clap, pat, snap, and stomp activities can be rewarding moments where you connect with your students through music, movement, and laughter.
These types of activities will help you build community in your classroom too!
This activity will help calm students down and get them ready to leave your classroom using gentle patting body percussion.
Have everyone sit on the floor and give themselves a BIG HUG.
Now let’s just pat gently on our knees, our shoulders, our head, our toes, our fingers- keep it going!
The choice of music will matter!
Try using this activity to calm down. Find some “calm” music with a beat.
I put together some instrumental background tracks to use for this type of activity.
Check out Sing Play Create on iTunes and Spotify!
INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC TRACKS
Hopefully, you’ve got some ideas going using action and directional words together to help your students feel the beat.
Now when your students hear “body percussion activity” they’ll cheer!
Here at Sing Play Create we’re working to bring you interactive resources you can easily use in your classroom.
We have a variety of Body Percussion activities that teachers like you love.
BODY PERCUSSION ACTIVITIES IN OUR TEACHERS PAY TEACHER STORE
BODY PERCUSSION THEMED ACTIVITIES
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Let’s Move and Learn with Music!
Sandra
Hi there! I’m Sandra, one of the authors behind Sing Play Create. My goal is to provide teachers with interactive resources and activities to improve the effectiveness of their teaching and enhance student learning.
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