I bought a set of resources for rhythm teaching in a sale at a bookshop recently – the best £2.50 I have spent in a long time.
It consisted of a set of press-out pictures of ladybirds, worms, butterflies, spiders, bees, and blanks. I’ve found a picture of the cards here:
http://www.tts-group.co.uk/shops/tts/Products/PD3164610/Rhythm-Cards/
and also here:
http://www.wildgoose.ac/SearchResults.asp?Search=rhythm+cards&Submit=
The backs of the cards have music notation; I think I would prefer to have crotchet and quaver, rather than quaver and semiquaver notes, but at my bargain price I’m not complaining.
It would be quite easy, I suppose, to get your own pictures and copy them and laminate them, and, in my mind, well worth the effort.
I’ve used them in a couple of infant classes already. So far I haven’t used the rhythm notation, but just used the words to create rhythmic patterns. The children have enjoyed creating patterns with the cards, and then clapping the word rhythms, and playing them on instruments.
They are great for group work, where each child has a card and they arrange them in different orders. Or they go round finding someone with a different card and playing each other’s rhythms. Later we shall layer up the rhythms to produce more complex compositions.
You could choose another set of pictures to relate to a class topic. Sport? Castles? Animals?