This fun ear training game teaches kids beginner rhythmic dictation. The kids you teach will be giggling and having a ball giving their character a crazy hairdo each time they answer correctly.
Bad Hair Day Ear Training Game for Kids
Purpose: Ear Training- rhythmic dictation
Teach and Review: Review the rhythm at the beginning of each round. Instruct the children that you will play a rhythm that is either the same as or different from the displayed rhythm.
Materials: Bad Hair Day faces, pipe cleaners, rhythm cards, keyboard
Preparation: Print the Bad Hair Day faces. I recommend laminating them. Next use a hole punch to punch 5 holes in the top of each Hair Day face. Also print out some simple rhythms or select a few measures from a piece of beginner sheet music.
Set up: Give each child a Bad Hair Day face and place a pile of pipe cleaners where the students can reach them. Give each student a set of same/different cards.
How to Play: Display a rhythm card. Play a rhythm that is either the same as or different from the rhythm shown. Students listen carefully and then answer “same” or “different”. You can have the child or children call out their answers or write their answers on a piece of paper.
Any student who answered correctly gets to take a pipe cleaner from the pile and give their “person” its first strand of hair. The kids slide the pipe cleaner through the hole and secure it. If students wish, they can twist, bend and curl the pipe cleaners to give the person a really bad hair day!
Display a new rhythm and begin a new round.
Free Printable
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Third, Start Teaching Piano Improv to put those well-trained ears to use as kids create music and give your students a lifetime of enjoyment at the piano.
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Nancy Campbell says
This is one of my absolute favorite piano games! The kids LOVE it!!!