Summer is fleeting and the school year is on the horizon. I must have blinked. I have loved every second of pretending to be a SAH mom this summer. Yet, I sat down to begin lesson planning and an all familiar excitement filled me.

Last year I was a first year teacher, with a newborn baby at home. Therefore, I used rhythm sticks A LOT. They were my “10 minutes left class, what do I do?” salvation.

Here are just some of the fun ways that you can use rhythm sticks in your classroom:

1. Tap the sticks together while listening to music. My goal is to enforce steady beat.

2. Tap the floor with rhythm sticks. When done as a group, you can easily quote a poem as a class while tapping. My favorite is to find a cute “what is your name” poem for the first day of school. It will get all of the kids involved and makes for a great introduction to music class.

3. Pretend the sticks are a hammer and nail. My kids love to do something they think they aren’t supposed to do with rhythm sticks. When I let them “hammer” one rhythm stick with the other, I am the coolest music teacher ever.

4. Use rhythm sticks to teach opposites: Fast & Slow, Loud & Quiet, High & Low (playing positions).

5. Pretend the rhythm sticks are another instrument. It is fun to pretend one rhythm stick is a violin and the other is a bow, or use just one and pretend it is a sax or trumpet.

Tap away, friends!