Whack-a-Time-Signature | Free Piano Teaching Game

Whack-a-Time-Signature is a fun teaching game to help students listen to and review time signatures.  Not only does it help the students count out a measure and keep the beat, it requires team coordination!

This game is awesome — and a favorite — for a music classroom!

Level: Beginner to Advanced

Objective: For ear training on time signatures, and to review the different time signatures

 

 

 

Materials:

• Chairs to sit on
• Music to listen to with different time signatures.  You can choose any song you would like!  Here are some examples:
  • 2/2 time signature: Moonlight Sonata (Beethoven)
  • 2/4 time signature: Turkish March (Mozart)
  • 3/4 time signature: Waltz from Sleeping Beauty (Tchaikovsky)
  • 4/4 time signature: “Spring” from The Four Seasons (Vivaldi)

 

Players needed: works best with 2 or more students (preferably at least 4, but 2 students can do it, too!)

 

Game Set-up:

This is easiest if the students are sitting in a circle – or at least sitting so that everyone can see everyone.

 

Game Play: 

Choose a time signature.  Begin listening to the music.  As a teacher, I start counting out each measure until it seems that the kids have it figured out.

For beginner students, I have them count out loud for this game.  For other students, I have them count in their heads to make it a little more challenging.

At the signal of the teacher, one student stands up for one whole measure, then sits down while another student stands up for the next measure.  The students continue to take turns standing up for each measure with only one student standing at a time.

The reason this game is called Whack-a-Time-Signature, because the students standing up and sitting down are similar the game, Whack-a-Mole.

For a large class, the students have to coordinate on their own without any prompting as to who goes next.  This is so fun to see if they can only have one person standing, but never miss a measure too!  This takes a lot of coordination AND practice!  But it’s definitely possible as we have done it in our musical classroom of about 30 students!

Switch songs and choose other time signatures.  You can continue to work through all the time signatures you want.

Of course, you can always make up variations to this game!

 

 

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