Title – KitKat 8th Notes

By – Rebecca Henders

Primary Subject – Music

Grade Level – pre-K – elementary

Here is a fun idea I picked up for teaching 8th notes.

Everyone gets a KitKat bar. Start by talking about eating the whole candy bar themselves, then what they would do if a friend came along and wanted some (most kids will say “split it in half”, although I’ve gotten some fun answers like “eat it really quick before you could get any”). The kids then split their KitKats in half (these are the easiest ones to use because they are perforated – I tried Snickers once in an emergency, huge disaster) and you can illustrate that you don’t have 2 new candy bars (beats), but 2 halves of the same old candy bar (beat); that each one is smaller (shorter/quicker); each 8th note gets half of a candy bar (beat) etc. They never forget about 8th notes after that, even though they sometimes still tell me “when you see 8th notes in a song you cut all the candy bars in half.”

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