Rhythmic Building Bricks or Blocks are often used as compositional tools in elementary music classrooms.
Developed by Carl Orff's fellow teacher, Gunild Keetman, these simple 2-beat patterns use quarter notes, quarter rests, and paired eighth notes (and sometimes a half note). These are elemental rhythms most commonly found in children's rhymes, fingerplays, and simple songs and can be combined to create more complex rhythmic patterns.
Rhythmic building bricks break down composition into small, manageable units, enabling students to create their own pieces from simple patterns. This approach reduces the intimidation of composing and encourages creativity through structure. By experimenting with different combinations of rhythmic bricks, students explore concepts like repetition and arrangement, fostering creative ownership of their musical output. The use of repeated patterns helps students internalize how repetition contributes to musicality and familiarity. Additionally, rhythmic bricks allow for differentiation, as teachers can adapt pattern length, rhythmic complexity, and instrumentation to meet diverse learning needs.
Specific Learning Goals
Rhythm: Building bricks should follow natural speech (the way a word is spoken).
Repetition: Musical themes often repeat.
Form Exploration: Try various elemental forms of aabb, abab, abba, aaab, and abac.
I Get It, Now What?
Rhythmic Building Bricks/Blocks are often thematic and should always use natural speech (which is why names don't work well as there are too many accents and pickups that don't fit the elemental quarter notes and eighth notes).
Small groups of students are given 4 building bricks (this will create an 8-beat rhythm). The rhythms should be ones already learned. They practice arranging them, speaking them, adding body percussion and perhaps transferring these to non-pitched percussion. They may be used as a contrasting section to a short speech piece or song.
These candy building bricks/blocks are perfect for fall and winter holidays and include some variations including sixteenth notes! Please note this will force a copy.
This was a lesson posted in my Patreon community two years ago. My students love this book and has a lovely connection to the famous tap dancer, Savion Glover!
Click here for the slides and please note, this will force a copy.
I love fingerplays, do you? There are so many different ones and the text is typically rhythmic and short, perfect for working on steady beat, rhythmic division, and expressive elements like dynamics and the four voices. They are also perfect to use with older students to develop ostinato (short, repeating patterns that create harmonic texture) and for improvisation.
For the full slide set, click here.
Here are some of the slides in the set:
Our daughter was born in China and so our family is Chinese American. We have tried to honor her culture and ensure she is involved in her culture and surrounded by people who look like her. Not always easy or comfortable, but it shouldn't be, right? SO incredibly important, and it has helped me understand on a deep level that representation matters.
My daughter loves noodles; specifically, rice noodles. And dumplings. And rice. And more noodles. Last year we bought her a shirt that said, "This girl lives on Anime and noodles". It was spot on!
I don't remember where I first heard this dumpling song but when my daughter was little and we were making dumplings I learned it and then promptly forgot about it. Fast forward to last year when I fell in love with the wonderful Miss Katie on instagram. She reminds me so much of Mr. Rogers and so thoughtfully and lovingly talks about difficult topics with littles. She works with preschool aged children and you can see how much she cares and spreads love and joy.
Here is her video on the Dumpling Song:
Simple version, this one is so cute as it is Katie doing this with her
Chao ji dan, chao ji dan, chao, chao, chao. (Fry the egg.)
Qie luo bo, qie luo bo, qie, qie, qie. (Cut the carrots/radishes.)
Bao jiao zi, bao jiao zi, nie, nie, nie. (Wrap dumplings, pinch.)
This is an other version - (Mandarin Chinese - pinyin on top, Chinese characters in the middle, and English on the bottom):
Chǎo luóbo, chǎo luóbo, qiē qiē qiē, mǒ diǎn yóu, sǎ diǎn yán, huó diǎn xiàn. 炒 萝卜，炒 萝卜，切 切 切，抹 点 油， 撒 点 盐，和 点 馅。 Stir-fry the carrots, stir-fry the carrots, and chop them up. Then add some oil and salt to make the stuffing.
Bāo jiǎozi, bāo jiǎozi, gǎn gǎn pí, gǎn hǎo miànpí zhuāng hǎo xiàn, bāo jiǎozi. 包 饺子，包 饺子，擀 擀 皮，擀 好 面皮 装 好 馅， 包 饺子。 Make dumplings, make dumplings. We roll the dough into the pieces. After that, we put the stuffing in to make the dumplings.
Bāo jiǎozi, bāo jiǎozi, niē niē niē, fàng jìn guōlǐ gài gàizi, zhǔ jiǎozi. 包 饺子，包 饺子，捏 捏 捏，放 进 锅里 盖 盖子，煮 饺子。 Make dumplings, make dumplings. Pinch them shut then put them into the pot. Close the lid and boil the dumplings.
Boil the dumplings, boil the dumplings. They smell good. Get everything ready to serve the dumplings and enjoy.Zhǔ jiǎozi, zhǔ jiǎozi, xiānɡ pēnpēn, duān shànɡ jiǎozi bèi hǎo liào, chī jiǎozi. 煮 饺子，煮 饺子，香 喷喷， 端 上 饺子 备 好 料，吃 饺子。
