Fun With Measures

  Explaining time signature is hit and miss with my 5-6 year-olds. I was struggling with the concept of the measure line with my first student of the day and failed miserably. Even when we worked in the writing book and drew the measure lines I felt I was not connecting. The next student was the same age and we were doing the same lesson. I remembered copying  learning tools from Susan Paradis called rhythm blocks. This seemed to do the trick.

    We lined up the cards into 4 count units using my colored pencils as measure lines. This allowed D. to find out what combinations make up four beats. Then we changed the time signature and only put three beats between fences.

   Fences, measures, sometimes words make such a difference in communication. On some days I feel tongue tied and unable to say things that make sense and other days I am right on.