Ready to make some music? When you empty a small plastic jar or pill bottle, let the kids help you funnel (cone of paper) in some rice, dried lentils, stones, etc. to make a shaker. Different ‘rattlers’ in different containers make different sounds. My favourite is a small handful of rice in one of those red and yellow ETA B-B-Q sauce bottles. With the ‘woven’ base, they already look like maracas. A strip of sticky tape will secure lids if you’re worried about little kids swallowing things.
Add a pair of sticks or chopstick ‘clackers’, saucepan-lid cymbals, a bucket or empty tin for a drum, and cardboard-tube trumpets and you’ve got a band. Now you can sing songs and make music together. Give yourself a name and be ready to perform for anyone who walks through the door, though this is a good outside activity because it’s pretty raucous. If you put out a hat your band may even make some money.
Rain sticks make a wonderful addition to your instrument collection but these take a little time to make. Let’s leave that for another post. In the meantime you could set about gathering the following: a cardboard tube, the longer the better, as many unwanted screws as you can find, and tape of any kind. I assume you’ve got rice.
how to play with kids 