Fun with Composers was a big hit! I played the music for the students and asked for ideas of what it might sound like. I am using Persian March by Johann Strauss. Without knowing the title, one boy said it sounded like marching off to battle. Other great answers were: "sounds like a circus", "sounds like a fair", "sounds like dancing."
We used the suggested drum beat to get students to feel the movement. She suggests tapping the drum in different patterns and making those patterns match a movement. So a simple beat tapped on the head of the drum was marching and taping on the rim was hopping. When you tap the drum three times fast the kids had to freeze. It was a lot of fun and very easy. We added percussion instruments and every child seemed to be engaged in the activity.
Along with that activity, I introduced the quarter note and eighth notes. We clapped some rhythm cards. I added words to the rhythms to go along with the theme of the camp, which is Noah's Ark. Quarter notes are "Zoo" and a pair of eighth notes are "Monkey."
We played a game called find the monkey. I would clap a four beat rhythm of quarter notes and insert a pair of eighth notes on one of the four beats. Students had to tell me which beat the monkey was on. For older students I added two monkey rhythms.