Winter Games

I was hoping that my next blog would be linking up with Aileen's "Five Favorite Pins Linky Party" but I just can't get ahead this year and have barely been on Pinterest lately.  I've made a New Year's resolution to work out more (which, I've done a really good job keeping) and to spend more time with my kids.  That includes making these for their Valentine's Day Parties (okay, this was a Pinterest thing but I don't think that's what Aileen meant, lol):

And making this for Noah's Heritage project, his name is Sven and he's from Sweden (this is before he got his mouth, lol):

So, hopefully next month I can join Aileen's party!  Be sure to head over and check it out!

I have been playing some "Winter Games" in my room.  I mentioned these in the blog post I did about the Facebook Free For All.  There are a variety of games included and since I've created it I came up with more ideas of how to simulate the Olympics through these files.  

Here's one that I did with my fifth graders.  We talked about how there are multiple events going on at a time during the Olympics.  So, the kiddos divided into groups of 3-4 and each were given a set of cards representing different sports, here's a sample card from each set:

The students were told that the people in their group were their fellow competitors.  They spread the cards out, so that all the members of the group could see the cards, like this:

I showed them a flashcard, written in stick notation (so it was a stick to staff solfége practice), like this:

The object of the game was to be the first person in their group to identify the staff card in their stack that matched the stick notation.

It was really sweet to see how some groups, even though they were competiting against each other, really helped each other out.  They loved it and I was able to make some assessments on who could identify the patterns and who was completely guessing.  The benefit of this was that they were in really small groups so they all were engaged and taking part in the activity.

Here are the links to the files, if you're interested in them and you can read more about what the files contain on blog post mentioned earlier in the blog.

Melodic files:

1. so-mi
2. la
3. do 
4. re (mi-re-do only)
5. re (pentatonic)
6. low la
7. low so
8. high do
9. fa
10. ti

Rhythmic files:

1. ta ti-ti
2. rest
3. half note
4. tika-tika
5. ti-tika
6. tika-ti
7. syncopa
8. tom-ti
9. ti-tom
10. tim-ka
11. 6/8 meter

I hope that you all are enjoying your long weekend!