New Material: Magnetic Puzzle

I have had a puzzle type material floating around in my head for two years but haven't created anything yet due to the time involved. 

In Music Mind Games, Michiko uses a foam puzzle to teach notes and rests.  All of the pieces of the notes are separate: hollow note heads, circles to fill in the note heads, stems, flags, as well as all of the rests.  She then starts with a whole note and teaches the notes, adding pieces as she goes.  Whole note, half note (add a stem), quarter note (add a stem and fill in the note head), etc.

Music Mind Games Puzzles

I would like to create a similar material that students can manipulate to create all of the interval symbols.  I think that it will really solidify the symbols for going up and going down since the symbols are all a combination of neumes (the placement of each neume is important).  We will use the puzzles in two ways.  We will use it to create all 7 going up symbols (and down as well)  in order so that students will see the progression.  We will probably also use them to copy Parallage Phrases or to do dictation/composition. 

 To get an ideal of how this material will be used in Byzantine Beginnings, you can watch two MMG videos.  In the first video you can see Michiko actually teaching students the notes along with their names.

https://www.musicmindgames.com/makingnotes

In the next video, you can some of Michiko's students using the puzzle to copy some Blue Jello cards.  By copying the cards the students are learning to really know all of the parts of the notes and where they go.

https://www.musicmindgames.com/node/742


Isn't it amazing what a three year old can learn with the right materials?

Michiko had a puzzle maker create puzzles for her in bulk, which I obviously cannot do.  The benefit of using a puzzle is that when it is time to clean up all of the little pieces have a place and you immediately know to look for a missing piece.  I could buy some thick foam and cut it out with an exacto knife but I haven't found anything that seems sturdy enough.  Instead, I have been considering using sheets of magnets that I would cut out with an exacto knife.

Magnetic Sheets

I started working on the layout this week, but I'm still not sure about the material.  If anyone has any suggestions I would be interested to hear.  Also, I originally planned to have the going up symbols blue, the going down symbols green and the rhythm symbols red.  As I was working on this I realized that I would have a few symbols that would be both colors (they would be turned upside down), and another symbol that can be neutral as well as going up.  So, I am not sold on the green and blue, although I think red for rhythms could still be nice since it is sometimes red in the music.  Any thoughts on this?