Dry-Erase Dice - great for rhythm practice, solfa practice, and more!

Wow, it has been a while since I last posted! It was a crazy Holiday season- I was in a community theater production of Les Miserables the 1st two weekends in December, then immediately following was my students 5/6 grade chorus musical- The North Pole Musical (super cute by the way) and then winter break started which included getting engaged and driving all over the state of Ohio.  I am now sitting at home on what was supposed to be my first day back to school but we have sub-zero temps (F) here with wind chills at about -20 or -30 so we are off for the day.  I will be posting much more in the new year!

I had seen rhythm dice before on various blogs etc. and loved the idea so I started to make my own over break.  I ordered a few sets of dice from AMAZON and am keeping 4 with the numbers, and then covering the rest with tagboard to make my dice sets.  I made one set (8 dice) before I decided that since I was using packing tape why not make a blank set.  I plan to make 16 blank dice and then I can use them for various ages and classes very easily without spending hours taping together sets and finding somewhere to store them (I ran out of packing tape after 8).  This way they can be used not only for rhythm, but solfa, and fun ways to practice singing in chorus as well- there are so many dice ideas on Pinterest! I have also seen dice with a pocket on each side that would work the same way. 


Before

After

Tag-board template

When I finally get back to school (hopefully tomorrow) I am using dice for rhythm practice/ composition for quarter/ paired eighth notes all the way through tika-ti (two sixteenth notes- eighth).  I have posted on my wix site a composition worksheet I will be using with the dice- students will roll to make a 4 or 8 beat pattern (4 beat version is posted), then will have to read it out loud to a partner, the teacher, etc.  I also have a smartboard file where each rhythm is assigned a number (I couldn't get the SBdice to show the rhythms on the sides) so one group can use the board OR teacher can show a large version example.  

 

You can also play a rhythm-snake game where students try to memorize rhythm patterns in groups.  Student 1 rolls and group beat aloud- student 2 rolls and says beats 1 and 2 aloud, etc until they forget the pattern. 

All of these ideas can be transferred to solfa practice too-  you could even have one dice as rhythm, one as solfa, and one with time signatures to do some whole song composition rather than just one element. 


*** Authors Note:  I realized that dry erase markers rub off the tape REALLY easily - so I now use a permanent marker- and it actually still erases pretty well. If I have a trouble spot, I color over it with dry erase marker, and then both rub off easily.