Tideo is a great song to teach sixteenth notes in elementary music! There are a couple of different versions of this song, but so many different activities you can do with it! In this blog post, we’ll talk about how I use this song to teach and practice sixteenth notes in my classroom.
The slides you see in this post are from my Tideo resource. You don’t need the resource in order to use the ideas I have for you in this post, but it has all of the slides you could need to teach the song and concepts if you want to save time and energy.
Here’s what you get:
- Song lyrics (2 different versions)
- Iconic notation
- Sixteenth note presentation
- Standard notation (in both full and stick notation)
- Body percussion presentation (2 difficulties)
- “Create your own” pattern presentation (2 difficulties)
- Unpitched instrument patterns (2 instrument combinations)
- Xylophone steady beat presentation
- Stick and standard notation for 2 versions
If you’re interested in purchasing, click here.
Teaching the song Tideo
First, you need to teach the song. I do this by showing them the lyrics and having them keep a steady beat while I sing. We change up the beat by either using rhythm sticks or using different body percussion movements. Young students love to use beat buddies (my old beanie babies! Just be prepared for tags to fall off. Yes, your heart will hurt a little the first time it happens.)
You could also have students keep a steady beat on instruments while they sing the song. It’s so important to have students practice steady beat on instruments no matter the age- patting your legs and playing it on a xylophone are two very different skills! Depending on where your students are at, you could have students figure out the first line of the song on xylophones!
Adding Percussion to Tideo
Isolate Words
Next, I prepare sixteenth notes with the song Tideo by adding body percussion to certain words of the song. Here’s what we do:
- Pass- clap
- Tideo- snap
- Jingle at the window- pat
- Jinglin’ jinglin’ jinglin’ Joe- stomp
I start by assigning one movement to each student. The next time, they’re in charge of doing that movement plus one other. While they do their one or two movements, I’m doing all of them. Usually students see me doing all of the movements and decide they want to try that, too! So then I challenge them to try all of the movements with me! It’s a blast, even if they get a little frazzled.
After we do the song a few times like this, I ask the students which words were the fastest. This gives them a chance to notice that “jingle at the window” was much faster than the others. I’m not going to point out how many sounds it was or why it was so fast yet.
Whole Song Body Percussion
Next, we’ll add body percussion to the beat. I have a couple of different patterns that I’ll show them depending on the grade level and abilities. We’ll all do the same pattern first, and then I’ll have students create their own patterns! I let them create a pattern with a partner- this is a great time to let them chat and be creative with each other!
After we all do our created patterns together at the same time, we share out! Depending on time I’ll have students either show us the movements they created or, if we have more time, I’ll let them perform for the class while we sing the song! They love to share their creations with each other, and it’s a great time for me to get ideas for the next time I need to do body movements with a song!
Unpitched Instrument Patterns
You can do the exact same thing with instruments! Instead of showing students a slide with body percussion movements on it, I’ll show them a slide with shapes. Each instrument will be a specific shape, and then we can play our patterns. You can then have students have small groups (I like to keep groups under 4 if possible) with a couple of different instruments to create their own pattern!
Using the Tideo Song to Teach Sixteenth Notes
Now that we’ve had a little more experience with Tideo, we can use the song to teach sixteenth notes. We’ll review which part of the song sounded the fastest and determine how many sounds were in that beat. Then, I’ll show them the sixteenth notes and tell them what they are before we practice reading patterns with sixteenth notes.
I make a big deal about the difference between sounds and beats. Sixteenth notes are four sounds but only one beat. Half notes are two beats but only one sound. I find that making this distinction when they are little (we start talking about the difference in first grade!) really helps when rhythms get more complicated or when they are trying to actually play music on instruments when they’re older.
Now we’re going to think about songs that we’ve already learned and identify the sixteenth notes in them. We’ll sing Old Brass Wagon and Alligator Pie and identify the sixteenth notes. I’ll also pull out chairs and we’ll do chair rhythms too, where chairs are the beats and students are the rhythms. It is so much fun (to read more about chair rhythms, check out this blog post!)
What activities do you love to do to teach sixteenth notes? Which version of Tideo do you teach? I would love to hear from you! Comment below or DM me on Instagram (@caffeinated.j) so we can chat about our favorite rhythm activities! If you want to check out that resource for Tideo, click here.
