Counting Games
Here are five singing games to explore counting
1. Freeze Dance
Keeping a beat is a foundational and extremely important musical skill. The aim of freeze dance is to help the students internalize the beat so that it can be used in subsequent games. The teacher plays a beat and children move on the beat. The children freeze when the sound stops. Movement possibilities include the following:
The children maintain a steady beat while moving and counting out loud (ones and multiples, from one, from where you left off). Add variations by saying “see if you can…”
3. Elimination
Students sit in a circle and play the game as follows:
1. Freeze Dance
Keeping a beat is a foundational and extremely important musical skill. The aim of freeze dance is to help the students internalize the beat so that it can be used in subsequent games. The teacher plays a beat and children move on the beat. The children freeze when the sound stops. Movement possibilities include the following:
- Body percussion (pat, snap, stomp, clap, etc.)
- Axial movement (bend, twist, point, wave, etc.)
- Locomotor movement (walk, skip, hop, run, etc.)
The children maintain a steady beat while moving and counting out loud (ones and multiples, from one, from where you left off). Add variations by saying “see if you can…”
- Count by ones, multiples, from one, or from any other number.
- Move and count with the steady beat. Freeze when the sound stops.
- Group the count. Perform movement patterns, grouping the patterns into 3 or 4 beats (e.g. for threes, pat-clap-clap, or for fours, pat-pat-clap-clap). Start at one for each group or continue from where you were. You could also count some numbers silently.
- Stop after a multiple. The teacher plays the beat and everyone moves and counts. Stop at a predetermined multiple (this works best for larger numbers). The either start again at one or from where you left off. Leave three or four counts after each stop (quiet, quiet, “ready, go”). Have the students change direction or movement pattern with each multiple.
- Skip counting. Use any of the above variations, but with skip counting.
- Point and count. Count objects together on a steady beat. For example, count five objects (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) and then loop back and count the same five objects (6, 7, 8, 9, 10). Internalize some numbers and vocalize others.
3. Elimination
Students sit in a circle and play the game as follows:
- Make passing motions (left to right or right to left) on the beat; say “left right”
- Pass objects (sticks, stones, bean bags) on the beat; say something like “set, grab”
- Pass the objects while counting; either on each beat or every other beat (if every other beat, say 1 and 2 and 3 and…)
- Add a contrasting object (a red stick, for example). Whoever ends up with the stick at a certain point is out. Those who are out move back or sit down and help with the counting, adding body percussion (for example, pat snap) on the beat.
- Add additional contrasting objects to make the game go more quickly. Take out some of the contrasting objects as the circle gets smaller.
- Establish a hand-clapping pattern in groups of two or four (for example, in two it can be pat clap right clap pat clap left clap; or in groups of four it can be forward clap side clap)
- Sing to the tune of Green Sally “Count by 2’s. Count by 2’s. Everybody count by 2’s.” (Google the song “Green Sally up, Green Sally down, Green Sally baked her possum brown.”
- Then maintain the pattern while saying the numbers (count on each beat or every other beat depending on the difficulty level).
- The object of the game is to see how far the group can count without messing up. If they can do it endlessly, increase the difficulty by using a different number, speeding up, or saying the numbers with the micro-beat (two numbers in the place of one).
- Stand in a circle. One person is “Big Bootie” and everyone else to the right is named a sequence of numbers (prime or multiples)
- Say “Big Bootie, Big Bootie, Big Bootie. Oh yeah! Big Bootie!” along with step right, clap, step left, clap. The first step is on “Bootie”
- Then Big Bootie, on step right says “Big Bootie” and on left step says someone’s number. On the next right step the one whose number was called says their number and then on left step says someone else’s number (or “Big Bootie”), and etc. If someone messes up by not saying their number on right step and someone else’s on left step, they are out. This means that they go to place in the circle where the numbers end. Every whose number was higher gets a new number and the game starts again.