Holiday Tree

5th and 6th grade are learning to read actual notes! No longer will they be working with ti's and ta's! In order to get them ready for this next step we learned about what the notes are, and how they go together.

Each student created their own holiday tree! The tree had to be made up of notes, but they could decorate the rest of the page however they wanted.

Working from the top of the tree down we see at the very top of our tree is a whole note which equals 4 beats.  Coming off the whole note are two tree branches, each branch receives one half note (1/2 + 1/2 = 1). This process is similar until we are at the bottom of the tree where all the students have 1/8th notes on the bottom.  The tree can be used to remind the students as we go forward 2 different pieces of information. 1.) How many beats each note receives. 2.) What 2 notes equal each other (1/4+1/4=1/2).

This is also a great cross-curriculum lesson with Math. As we are learning about what notes equal each other we have to practice adding our fractions!

For Example:

1/8 note + 1/8 note= 1/4 note
1/4 note + 1/4 note= 1/2 note
1/2 note + 1/2 note= 1 whole note