Rhythm Stick Activity Tutorial  “Zoom, Zoom, Zoom”

Rhythm Stick Activity Tutorial  “Zoom, Zoom, Zoom”. This activity is going to help your students learn the beat and patterns and the form of a song.

RHYTHM STICK ACTIVITY TUTORIAL  “ZOOM, ZOOM, ZOOM”

One thing I like to do is use a simple nursery rhyme or a simple song to help my students learn music skills. These activities also help students in a lot of different ways, but mainly we’re trying to get them to learn a steady beat, to feel that steady beat so they can hear it and feel it and show it without the teacher’s help.

So doing a wide variety of different activities is going to give them lots of experiences so that they can internalize what a steady beat is. And then they will be able to show you that they will be able to then be the teacher.

 I’ll be using the song Zoom, Zoom, Zoom or going to the moon for this rhythm stick activity.

GET THE FREE RESOURCE HERE:

I have a long and a short version of the song “Zoom, Zoom, Zoom”.

The song is also on iTunes and Spotify, so you can easily listen to it. And there’s lots of other versions of this song out there, and you might want to just play and sing it yourself.

SPOTIFY

AMAZON

APPLE MUSIC

And, we turned our video into a children’s book.  It’s available on AMAZON “ZOOM, ZOOM, ZOOM, WE’RE GOING TO THE MOON”

PAT THE STEADY BEAT

The first thing I’m going to do in the activity is just have the students listen to the music and feel the steady beat with their hands.

After we pat the beat, we’re going to talk about the lyrics. This song is super easy to learn, and so if you’re working with first grade and up, you can easily teach them the words for the song while they’re patting the beat.

I echo teach the lyrics to the students as it’s pretty easy to learn.

You can them play the beat a couple of times. Make sure everybody’s got it. Then it’s time to get out our rhythm sticks. I use a holding position for I’m ready. Or you can put up on the floor to be completely at rest.

It is a good idea to come up with some way . You want your students to do what they are supposed to do with their sticks. So if we’re not using them, they’re on the floor and they’re sleeping, they’re at rest.

When I want them to pick them up I say; okay, now we’re ready, or “ready position”.

It’s important to choose something that will really help the kids, because most of the students, they want to know what they’re supposed to do. And then those that don’t respond, or they start messing around, it’s going to be fewer than if you don’t come up with some kind of idea.

That’s just a simple rhythm stick activity tip for you.

So in this song, what I’ve done is I’ve broken it into section A, Section B, and then there is a countdown section where they go, ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one.

RHYTHM STICK PATTERNS

Now we’re ready to pick up our rhythm sticks. And what I’m going to do is I’m going to just choose the first action and then I’m going to have them do that for the whole song.

 This is just for them to practice the beat. Like I said, the purpose of this activity is to give them experience playing and feeling and hearing how that beat fits with the music and that kind of thing.

So we’re just going to do one action, which is the first section, and it’s tapping on the floor. Now, if you don’t want them tapping on the floor, use buckets or something else and you can adapt it, they can even tap their knees if they’re sitting in chairs.

You know, we’re always kind to our bodies and we never hurt ourselves and want to be really careful tapping them on our legs nice and gently. And that’s a soft sound, which is kind of nice, too.

The next action that they can do for the whole song too.

After we do the different actions we’ll work on the countdown, or C SECTION.

And then for the countdown, I have them just tap in the middle and then you want to come up with something they can do when it says lift off.

So do you want them to go left long or they can go right or  around the circle. You could choose something fun for them to do on that lift off part.

That may be enough for one lesson. You know, it might be time to move on because you’ve practiced the beat, you’ve sang the song and you’ve played the beat three different ways and talked about the song. So, it might be time to then save the rest of it, putting it in the pattern and in the form of the song for the next class time.

So that would be totally fine. You need to consider the age of your children and move at the pace that they’re moving and go with the flow. It also might be that if you’re doing this with four year olds, they’re not probably going to be able to do all the patterns. So this would be the full activity. They’re just going to play that one action for the entire song.

They’ve done six different ways to play the Beat.. This would be great for just in preschool.

PUT IT ALL TOGETHER

So next we’re putting the patterns together in a section. We’re going to play four beats down one, two, three, four, and then one, two, three, four. And when I do the circle, I think about, I’m imagining tapping at the bottom.

And then we repeat the A section two times. So, then I would count it out with them before I turn on the music.

Then we have the B section and that’s all up above the head.

Be sure to go with the pace of your students.

EXTENSION ACTIVITY FOR UPPER GRADES

If you’re doing this with upper elementary, they can them make up their own patterns to each section of the song.

Ask them what will you do on the A section? What do you want to do? And the B section? And what should we do for the countdown? You could write those ideas on the board or have them put them on a piece of paper and draw a little pictures, and then you can have them share the ideas or you can have them be in small groups and share their ideas together.

There’s lots of different ways you can take this as an extension to give them a creating opportunity. It’s a super fun song and it will work up to third grade.  If you do it with the older grades, you will need to have some of these extensions, like giving them some challenges on ways they can create and make it a little more complicated for them than just doing a simple rhythm routine to a nursery.

Right? But if you take them on the journey from the beginning to the end, and then you’re going to challenge them, put them in small groups and say, okay, now you guys come up with your own zoom, zoom, zoom movements and write the patterns. That’s going to be perfectly fine for your upper grades.

Here’s a way to break down this activity into shorter segments and use it over several class time.

During the first class, just sing it, the second class you can just pat the beat. The during the third class. start doing some of the rhythm stick actions. During the fourth class and the fifth class put the patterns together.

It’s an engaging activity you can use song over the period of 4 to 6 weeks as a steady beat, warm up in your classroom and mix it in with some of your other activities.

It’s giving students that experience of playing the steady beat in many different ways- repetition that’s going to help them.

It’s really important with the younger students in particular, and it also helps you with lesson planning because you’re not coming up with a different steady beat activity each week. You’re just going to take this song and do it in a little bit different way.

How will you use this activity in your classroom?

RESOURCES THAT WORK WITH THIS ACTIVITY

Clap Pat Snap Stomp Beginning Steady Beat Activities

I Can Feel the Steady Beat Song and Beat Activity

Looking for more rhythm stick activities?

Check out the “CAPYBARA” Rhythm Stick Routine video tutorial.

 Get the Freebie When you Subscribe!

Thanks for reading this post!

Please share this post.