Estimated reading time 5 minutes
Table of Contents
Introduction
Do your students get the deer-in-the-headlights look when you quiz them on rhythm? Are you looking for a great way to engage your kids when working on clapping? Legos make a fun way to help your students get rhythm. All you need are Legos and a marker. Read more to learn about Lego rhythm manipulatives.
So, what’s a manipulative? The website psichologyanswers.com defines it as, “… any concrete objects that allow students to explore an idea in an active, hands-on approach.” Manipulatives get used a lot in math classrooms, but also work well for music teaching.
This post is an example of the “More” in the Color Coding & More blog category. The power of manipulatives stems from the students touching the objects, adding an extra dimension to their multisensory learning. However, color coding can be included as well. More on this in a bit.
You can use manipulatives with any student, but students with ADD, LD, ASD, and other special needs will particularly benefit.
So, how exactly do you work with the Lego rhythm manipulatives? Read the next section to find out.
This post uses music terms. For definitions, see the Glossary at the end.
Clapping Rhythm with Lego Rhythm Manipulatives
Tactile
I first learned about Lego rhythm manipulatives at the 2019 ABLE Assembly in Kimberly McCord’s online presentation notes.
The Lego rhythm manipulatives work much like spatial notation, by showing how much rhythmic “space” each note gets. For a discussion of spatial notation read:
Also, you can use manipulatives alongside color coded counting numbers. The color coded counting numbers gives your student a guide of when to clap. For more info read:
Notice that I drew the quarter note on a Lego with one knob in the example below. The half note gets two knobs, with the dotted half note getting three knobs and the whole note four. This way the students can literally feel the number of beats in each note when they touch the Lego knobs.
For an example of eighth note rhythms, click here.
Color Coding
When you keep the color of each note value the same, you’ve color coded each note block. While color coding the note blocks won’t help the student perform rhythm better (as opposed to coloring the counting numbers, which will), it does help engage the student.
In 1996 George Rogers studied colored rhythm notation. He found that the students really liked colored rhythm a lot. “It seems the colored notation increased the students’ affective involvement in the academic task of reading music, with nearly 80% of the students preferring the experimental notation.
“This in itself might be of interest to practitioners who value music literacy and want to make music more appealing to elementary students” (23 – 24).
You can use a blend of Lego rhythm manipulatives and color coded counting numbers to help students perform rhythms. Start by having the students count and point at the notes. Next, have the students count and clap the rhythm. Then, they can count and play on the instrument.
Exploring Time Signatures with Lego Rhythm Manipulatives
I just recently attended the 2022 ABLE Assembly. Kathleen Gallagher, Jessica Wyton, and Jennifer Zuk talked about how to use Lego rhythm manipulatives in their presentation “Linking Music, Language, and Literacy.”
As I listened, it occurred to me that the Lego rhythm manipulatives could be used to teach time signatures in addition to rhythmic figures. The knobs now represent how many beats each time signature gets. (The blue block has a double row of knobs. However, the front row represents the four beats in 4/4 time.)
Concluding Thoughts on Lego Rhythm Manipulatives
Lego rhythm manipulatives gives you another tool in your music teacher bag of tricks. Being both visual and tactile, the Legos create a concrete learning experience.
It doesn’t matter if your students have autism, LD, special needs or are typical learners, they will love this music activity.
© 2022 Geoffrey Keith
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