Inner Hearing

Students are learning about rests in music -- Silence is as important as sound!  Thanks to a blog post by Thom Borden, kindergarten students have learned the song, "Apple Tree, Apple Tree."  This song is great for so many musical concepts, but for this lesson, the concept of rests was introduced.  We started with eight black plates, each with a red (rubber) apple.  

The black plates represent the heartbeat (pulse) in the song.  By taking away an apple, we take away the sound from that beat.  This is a wonderful way to teach the idea of inner hearing!  Students then sang the song, but were silent on the beats that had an empty plate.  The students enjoyed taking away different apples and experiencing what the song was like with missing apples.  Ms. Mutz was very impressed with how attentive students were with this lesson.  They grasped the idea very quickly!  Of course, they eventually wanted to take ALL the apples away, and voila:  Inner hearing!!