Love Somebody: Beat & Rhythm

I was wandering the aisles of Dollar Tree the other day, looking for potential manipulatives, when I came across this 20-piece set of heart wood sticks. Naturally, I immediately thought that students could use these as beat keepers while following along to beat charts or a listening map. And for today, that means following along to the song Love Somebody.

However, since these heart sticks will probably break within a class period or two, here’s how you can create a classroom set of heart sticks of your own for less than $10.00.

• Buy a large pack of tongue depressors (about 100 for around $7).
• Buy a pack of heart stickers (you can usually find 100-count packs at most dollar stores).
• Stick one heart sticker on each end of every tongue depressor, placing a sticker on both sides.
• Once finished, you’ll have heart sticks your students can use to tap along with the beat on a chart or listening map. Best of all, you made 100 for less than $10.00!

Circle Game

Now that your heart sticks are ready, you can plan out the rest of your lesson, starting with the circle game for Love Somebody.

The game suggested by the Holy Names University’s website is as follows:

One child is chosen to be “it”. He thinks of the name of someone in the class, but does not tell the others. At the end of the song, three other children take turns trying to guess the secret. If no one guesses, the original child remains “it”. If the secret is guessed, the child who guessed becomes “it”.

Here is how I would play the game, with some small changes:

• The teacher will be “it” for the first example round of the game.
• “It” holds a heart eraser, key, penny, or other small object.
• Students in the circle close their eyes and hold out their hands for the object.
• During the first verse, “it” drops the object into a student’s hands.
• Then, students close their hands, open their eyes, and guess who has the heart/object.
• The student who guesses correctly gets to be “it” in the next round.
• If nobody guessed correctly, then the student with the heart would be “it”.

I would make these modifications for two reasons:

1. The student who’s “it” can’t change the person they chose partway through.
2. You can instruct students who’ve already held the heart to “keep their hands closed” on the next round. That way, more students have a chance to participate.

Barred Sixteenth Notes

Once students have played the game, and can sing the song independently, you can introduce the following worksheet. Ask students to sing the song as they keep the beat with their brand new heart sticks!

Worksheet Ideas

As always, my resources are meant to serve multiple purposes. Here are just a few ideas to get you started:

• Make it reuseable! Laminate the worksheet or slip it into a dry erase pocket so students can draw and erase without using up additional paper.
• Have students fill in the hearts with the correct rhythms.
• If students aren’t writing in stick or standard notation yet, have them fill in the number of sounds in each beat. They can draw tiny hearts to represent the sounds.
• Use the “sounds on each beat” analogy by having students divide the beat up into the number of sounds they hear. For example, they would divide the heart into two halves for barred eighth notes. They can finish up by coloring in each portion.
• Have students fill in the hearts with the correct solfège syllables.
• If you’re working on strong/weak beats, have students color the strong beats in red and the weak beats in pink.