Wednesday, August 27, 2008

homemade instruments

Here are some easy and fun instruments you can make for "marching and movement"Walmart has a package of 16 dowels all cut to length. Then just buy a spool of each color of the rainbow...glue on (I tried hot glue and then ended up using tacky craft glue)
another trick for this project is to put all the spools of ribbon on one of the unused dowels. You can pull the ribbon at equal lengths and cut them all at the same time - this saves a bunch of time!
I was able to make 15 ribbon sticks (anyone have a better name for these!?) with the 10 yard spools of ribbon. Total cost was less than $5
A girl in my last ward , Lanice, made these. The kids had so much fun running around to fun music , twirling and dancing with their rainbows. Here is another really simple project. I bought a bag on jingle bells ($1.76) and a spool of thicker ribbon ($1.98) and sewed on three bells. I plan to add some Velcro so the kids could wear them as bracelets or hold the circle of bells during marching. (these are also great during singing time in December)

Some other great ideas from Jodi in UT:
plastic eggs or film canisters w/rice or beans for shakers, an empty formula can with a ribbon attached to hang around your neck and chopsticks for a drum and drum sticks

Thanks for the great ideas Jodi! I made some eggs and the kids loved them! We shook them to Laurie Berkner: I Know a Chicken. We had soooo much fun with this one:) Oh, and I put 18 of them into an egg carton, colored the bottoms of the carton slots for each egg. The kids love putting their colored egg back into it's "home". I've also used yogurt containers for drums, and I think I need to make a few more, the kids almost always grab them first.

2 comments:

Marianne said...

What cute ideas! Love them!

Jodi said...

I am so excited to start a music group in my neighborhood. I love the instrument ideas. Some other easy home made instruments: plastic eggs or film canisters w/rice or beans for shakers, an empty formula can with a ribbon attached to hang around your neck and chopsticks for a drum and drum sticks. Keep the fun coming Kathleen!