Introducing *drum roll please* NOODLE NOTES! You may remember that I purchased a bunch of pool noodles at the beginning of the school year to make noodle ponies. Well, the noodles are out again! This time I created a way for students to compose with rhythms. In the activity below, first graders were asked to group notes in sets of 4 beats. We introduce the term “bar lines” and used the small yellow noodles to represent them. Today we used only notes that fit in one beat like a quarter note (ta), barred eighth notes (titi) and a quarter rest (sh). Each noodle note has a note on one side and the corresponding rest on the other side. In future lessons we’ll use half notes and whole notes. The half notes are twice as long as the blue note pieces because they get two counts instead of one. The whole notes are four times longer than the blue note pieces because they get four counts. Noodle Notes are GREAT for rhythmic dictation. I’m storing mine in a file box, but there are many options for storage that will work depending on how you plan to use them in your classroom. I must confess that I didn’t really measure my noodle notes. I just eyeballed them. So I’ll give you some guesstimates: whole notes=about 12 inches dotted half notes=about 9 inches half notes=about 6 inches quarter notes, barred eighths=about 3 inches the “bar lines” are about an inch (maybe less) How many noodles should you buy? Well…that depends. Do you want a class set? 4-8 sets for workstations? Will you use the same dimensions that I did? OH! And all noodles are NOT created equal! Some are about six inches longer than others. Some noodles are very thick. When creating your set, be sure to measure. Well…if that kind of thing matters to you. 🙂 If you can’t tell, I’ve kind of got a thing for pool noodles. You can check out my Pool Noodle Awesomeness Pinterest board HERE.