Rhythm Pizza
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This makes me really hungry for a New York cheese pizza. I had the best one on Long Island about a zillion years ago when our choir was on tour. It was so good it didn’t need toppings. But this isn’t a food blog, so I’ll discuss Rhythm Pizza.
Do you ever have to explain 8th notes to a young student who hasn’t learned fractions yet? Sometimes I have to give a short math lesson before the students gets it. From my Kodaly training I know that all I need to teach is that an 8th is two sounds on the beat, but sometimes that isn’t enough for students. Students may have a little trouble understanding why an eighth is shorter than a quarter.
I think the Rhythm Pizza is a fun way to explain it. You can cut out all the pizzas. Then cut out halves, quarters, and eighths on the black lines. First you place the halves over the whole pizza. Then the quarters over that, and finish with the eighths.  You can tell a story about how you thought you were going to eat the whole thing, and then people show up and you have to divide it into halves for 2 friends, then quarters for 4 friends, and then eighths. Or you can give the pieces to the student to put together to make 3 puzzles. Maybe you don’t want to cut it up, but just show the student.
my students love this. I use this to introduce an practice rhythm in Classical Conversations. I got a table cloth and taped a staff on it. I let the kids lay out different rhythms with the pizza slices and we have to clap it out. We only use 4/4 rhythm an the student have to figure our what makes a whole pizza. it get very challenging and fun.
Susan,
Try using kitchen shears to cut foam board. It took me a few minutes to cut all 4 pizzas. Roxane