Blue Jello Cards in Classrooms

Don't have enough sets of blue jello cards for every student in your class?  Great!  Pairing up to read blue jello cards can actually be more productive and fun than when students have their own!  In pairs or trios, students work together learning and saying these rhythms as a team.  If your students are smaller/younger 3-4 to a set works fine as well.  As students grow (middle school) 2-3 is ideal.

When you introduce blue jello cards to students the first thing to teach is not "blue" but how to turn the cards. Take some time to efficiently teach students how to turn the blue jello cards and keep them in the correct order. Remind them each time they turn at first to make sure they are being consistent. Believe me, when you are using many sets you will not have time to fix and check them in between classes, and when students try to read a set that is out of order class time ends up being wasted to get re-organized.

For when a set does get mixed up, make sure you can easily distinguish one set from another.  I draw a note/rest or music symbol on small dot stickers and place them on the plastic bags that hold the blue jello card sets.

"blue blue blue blue huckleberry"  Goodbye :)