Pease Porridge: 1st Grade

There are a few of those poems and songs that I use across grade levels and Pease Porridge is one of them.  I have posted a 3rd grade Pease Porridge lesson and this lesson is one I did recently with 1st grade.

We reviewed the poem from Kindergarten while keeping the steady beat.  I told them we were going to be detectives and decode the rhythm of the poem.  (EXCITING!)  They helped me keep the beat while I notated ta on the board.  Once I had notated the beat for all 3 phrases it was time to decode.

I have got to remember to write things lower!  I'm a little dense and keep doing it, so I bought a little green stool so that my poor little ones can reach.  You would think that after 6 years I would have figured it out.  BTW...is that not the cutest little bow!

We started by finding the silent beats and replacing ta with a rest.  Once that was complete we moved onto beats with two sounds.  Finally we played the rhythm of the whole thing using the words of the poem and ta's and ti-ti's.  They loved this and it didn't take long to do.  I'm sure you could extend this activity with instruments and in other ways but for this lesson it was enough.