I have an adult student who is actually a pretty persistent student. She doesn't do a lot of practicing but has actually still been progressing over the last couple of years by learning quite a bit during her lessons.
There is one particular challenge she has though that really kind of baffles me and I don't know how to approach it in a way that she can understand. The names for the notes; whole notes, half notes, quarter note, eighth note, sixteenth notes, etc. confuses her. She can't wrap her head around these not being fractions within a measure in an absolute way. So, she always wants, for example, an eighth note to = an eighth of the measure. In 4/4 time no problem. But, in something like 6/8 time, she is completely confused about why there are only 6 eighth notes and hates that they aren't an eighth of the measure.
I have tried explaining this to her in many ways. We've imagined and literally used parts of apples, I've explained that these note-values are ultimately only in relation to each other (for example, two half notes will *always* = a whole note, no matter what time signature), but she's still got something in her mind that I don't know how to untwist! It's frustrating.
So, I'm wondering if there happens to be anybody who has had a student with a similar problem, or if you yourself had one ... and how did this idea of fractions for the note names and those in relation to the measure and time signature, smooth itself out? Does anybody have any note-value teaching ideas that are super helpful in teaching when the idea isn't readily understood with normal methods?