Bring the band alive at your home with these DIY Musical Instruments for Kids to Make and play! And they actually make music, too!
Exploring music is such a great part of childhood. It’s not only enjoyable to kids, but it is healthy for their development. The creation of music is one of the unique things that makes a human a human. I gave the tip to have your kids in music lessons for ten years based on a...Read More
There are so many lessons to learn from music, and these 6 DIY instruments will have your family learning and making homemade music in no time.
Music has no language and it binds us all, especially children would love music and would also love to try their hand in musical instruments. Here are
Flarinet- a DIY Musical Mouthpiece : I've been a clarinet player for years and love teaching kids music. But, I've realized that clarinets can be really expensive, not so easy to play, and fairly fragile for younger children. So I started with a simple membraneaerophone design and stre…
Learn how to make a drum from an empty can, a balloon, and a rubber band. It's easy enough for kids to make!
This board game based teaching tool is great to help students remember the notes of the treble (or bass) clef. This is a cheap game of music battleship.
Amusez et éduquez vos enfants avec ces 16 instruments de musique DIY, de la batterie avec des boites de Pringles à la trompette maison.
These DIY music painted rocks are great for teaching kids about music theory
Stay connected to family and friends by sharing the LittleThings that spark joy.
If you've been following my blog, you know how much my boys love DIY instruments. They are the most requested activities by my oldest son. So when I saw this DIY xylophone by Caroline at De tout et de rien, it was just a matter of time before we tackled the project. Supplies Wrenches. You'll need a set of wrenches. Most sets come with 10, but you'll only need nine. Give the biggest wrench to someone you know that's handy. I bought a set for $20 and while that's WAY more than I ever pay for our educational activities, I knew this would get loads of use and when the boys grew tired of it, would be deconstructed and find a home in my husband's tool box. To lower the price, purchase a smaller set and make a miniature version. Pipe insulation tubing. This stuff is like a skinny pool noodle but is already scored down the middle on one side. Twine. Strong string works great. Instructions Open the tubing where it is scored. Fold the tube in half and cut. Insert eight wrenches in one length of the foam tube, in order from smallest to biggest. Set the smallest wrench aside. Grab a long length of twine. Tie it in a knot around one end of the tubing, and then lace it in and out, around each of the wrenches, pulling tightly to secure them in place. Tie another knot around the tubing after the last wrench. Repeat steps 3, 4, and 5 with the other length of tubing. Use the tiny wrench you set aside as a mallet. Strike the metal wrenches and make sweet music! Our boys have both had a blast with this. And I find it utterly charming that at completely random points in the day, I can hear the sweet chiming sounds it makes emanating from their rooms!
The brain is an unfettered motor. One of the best ways to quiet the monkey mind is by listening to music. Music helps people get out of their own heads. When listening to music, people not only rel…
Another of my home-made tube percussion instruments: Joy Tubes, AKA Flop-ophone Similar to Joia Tubes - Save hundreds of $$$! This set cost me $32 to make. (I bought the shoe rack for $4 at a thrift store, and I bought the bungees at a dollar store.) Materials: Two lengths of two-inch PVC pipe ABS flanges (adapters, 2" x 3") - one for each note An old shoe rack (open style) Bungee cords - one for each note (or cut up long ones) PVC glue or plastic cement A pair of old flip-flops A saw (if you don't have lengths cut at a store) A knife to trim down the flip-flops Markers or stickers for labeling and/or decorating pipes Rubbing alcohol or Goof-off to remove black ink on pipe. (The picture below shows materials I used.) 1- Have your helpful hardware store clerk cut the PVC for you. Take a measuring tape and marker (with millimeters for accuracy) to the store with you and mark your PVC pipe to be cut in these lengths: G 793 mm A 703 mm B 630 mm C 594 mm D 529 mm E 473 mm F 440 mm F# 418 mm G' 396.5 mm Notes: if you must cut the pipe on your own or trim pipes to tune notes, be sure to wear a mask to protect your lungs from the PVC dust. The average shoe rack will hold five tubes. I change out tubes according to the key and tone set I need. With the notes G, A, C, D, E, and F, you can play in pentatonic major keys of G, C, and F. (That's all I made for this set.) 2- Label your tubes with markers or stickers, and if desired, decorate them a bit. I used vinyl-like scrapbooking borders on this set. They added a nice touch and have held up well. 3- Glue a flange onto the TOP end of each pipe. 4- Loop, tie and/or fasten bungee material around the two top braces of the shoe rack to create a holder for each pipe. You may have to experiment a bit to find the best way to use the materials you have to work with. Here's a close-up of what I did on this particular set. 5- Trim flip-flops as shown, creating a handle on the heel end. Glue the stub from the toe piece in place to make the floppers air-tight. To play, simply 'flop' the top of the pipes, covering the open/flanged end with the wide part of the paddle. Add these to your collection of tube percussion and enjoy your Joy Tubes! (Instructions for the BOOM PIPES in the above picture are included in an earlier post.)
Aside from an appreciation for music, I have no other knowledge of it or possess any talent myself. My son's music teacher’s “tee tee tah” lesson on music notes had my son trying to teach me, though. His curiosity became mine too. To help him learn the names of the music notes and practice some math, I designed this fun activity. Download the music measure mat, cheat sheet, and notes/rests cards here. The objective? See how many different combinations of notes can be used to create a measure of music with a 4/4 time signature. I made some “note” cards and a cheat sheet that showed all the notes and rests and the number of beats each has. After cutting the cards and taping together the music measure mat, my son sorted the cards into piles. Then I told him that the top number in the time signature (4/4) told us that each measure of music should have four beats. Each note does not have 1 beat, some have as little as a half beat, others as much as 4 beats. I told him to fill the measure with notes and rests that added to four beats. He started with the easiest combinations: 1 whole note and then four quarter notes. But they got progressively harder. I had to explain that two half beats equal one beat (I used an apple cut in half to show how two halves equal one whole). Then, the fun really began – using the eighth notes and eighth rests! More and more cards were laid down. This was a great way to boost my son’s music vocabulary and work on counting, addition, and fractions. We made LOTS of different combinations of notes and rests that added to four beats. I lost count after he created 13 measures!
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We've shown you many strange and different musical instruments, but there are always more to be discovered. Here are some that you won't find in your average high school orchestra, unless you want to introduce them to the class yourself!1.
Finally! The Taxonomy of my Music is complete! While I’m working on my Digital Art assignments I enjoy watching my favorite TV shows. I bring this up to help you get a sense for how long it t…
This little invention has been a hit with kids as well as teachers. I first created a Bop-o-phone out of desperation for additional xylos. The frame/box costs basically nothing, and it adds some versatility to a set of Boomwhackers. Here are easy instructions and pictures. Please post additional ideas or feedback. Enjoy! Materials needed: an empty, sturdy box that contained a case of 8.5" x 11" copy paper (usually easy to find in the faculty workroom), wide tape, a meter stick, a marker, sturdy scissors, and a about six feet of yarn or soft string. For each mallet, you will need a pencil or 10" length of 1/4" diameter dowel, a small rubber ball (party favor or from 25 cent vending machine), and glue. Step #1 (1) Begin 2 cm from the left side of the box and mark along the top edge 4 cm wide by 1 cm deep arcs, 1 cm apart. Repeat markings on opposite edge. Cut out the arcs. (Cutting from each side and meeting in the middle will give cleaner results.) Step 2 (2) Gently pull the glued seams on one side of the box apart and lay the end flap flat. Mark a line through the center of the bottom of the box from the open edge to 7" from the opposite side. Then mark a "V", extending from the center line to each corner of the box. Cut along these lines. Step #3 (3) Fold the bottom sections over each other with the "V" on top (inside), narrowing the width of the open end of the box to about 8". Then fold the end flaps up, trim/square them up, and tape your seams. (4) Place Boomwhackers in the 'cradles' in diatonic order. (You can leave some off for pentatonic activities). Tie two lengths of yarn around the box and tubes lengthwise as shown in the top picture. Tape yarn in place on bottom of box to keep it from sliding around. The yarn will keep tubes in place, and it doesn't really inhibit tone. (5) Make a mallet by carving/drilling a hole in a rubber ball, applying glue to in the hole and on the end of the dowel or pencil, and inserting the stick into the ball. (Soft rubber balls actually sound better than hard ones.) You can use the Bop-o-phone as an Orff-type instrument for ostinatos or as a melody instrument. It's very easy to convert Boomwhackers to and from this mallet format. Here's a link to my digital song collection of color-coded melodies (with ostinato suggestions), which you might find very useful and versatile: http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/The-BIG-BOOK-of-FOLK-SONG-FUN-for-Bells-or-Boomwhackers-466033
male/ things I see I like, hope you do to ,open minds, open mind's, think, dream, do.. , this blog contains pics, graphs, quotes, music, that catches my eye, mind, or just stirs me, some of which is sensual and erotic NSFW
DIY Composition Manipulatives. Organized Chaos. easy rhythm cards made from foam sheets. great way to get students composing because each card matches the length of the note or rest and each note is a different color.
These Tips will help you discover new scales on your kalimba – and their format fits perfectly on your phone! Click to Purchase the new Easter Hymns Download Learning your kalimba’s musical scale is very important to understanding your kalimba and the music it can make. The scale is like a magic key that will […]
We had so much fun making our very own castanets the other day. We got our inspiration here but I've seen other versions on pinterest since. They're super easy to make and lots of fun to play with. All you need for each castanet is a strip of fairly sturdy cardboard and two bottle caps. Recycling diy at its best! It's really easy to replicate from the pictures but I'm including instructions -because some days you'd just rather follow instructions! 1. Cut a strip of cardboard to your required measurements (ours is just over 13cm by 4cm or just over 5 inches by 1.5 inches) 2. Fold the cardboard strip in half. If desired, you can decorate the cardboard: draw on it, paint it or do whatever you latest craft-crush dictates. (Alternatively, you can leave this step for after the castanets have been completed.) 3. Now you want to glue the bottle caps onto the cardboard. If your little crafters are very little, make sure they are gluing them on the inside of the folded cardboard piece. Put glue on the jagged edge of one bottle cap and place it on the edge of one end of the cardboard strip. If your cardboard is the thick kind you can press the bottle cap into the cardboard for a better grip. Let it dry. 4. Glue the second bottle cap on the other end of the cardboard strip, in the same manner. Make sure that it is aligned with the first bottle cap. You want them to click together when you're done, so they have to be positioned to correspond. Let the glue dry. If you've left the decorating-your-castanets part for last, now is the time to go wild and have fun with it. That's it! They are finished and ready to play with! Definately a minimum effort, maximum fun kids craft. If you are looking for more fun craft inspiration, you can find lots on my Kids Crafts pinterest board. Linked to: Annemarie's Haakblog, Today's Creative Life
Krazy Kalimba: Hi! Thanks for checking out my Krazy Kalimba. I'm Patrick, and I'm in 7th grade. My science teacher gave us an extra-credit project to build a music instrument that can play at least four notes. I looked at a bunch of ideas online and decided to try…
Jax loves music. He LOVES it. If any song comes on, whether he’s heard it before or not, he is singing along. I’ve been collecting musical instruments for him, mainly from the thrift st…
How to Make a Wooden Ocarina: Hello everyone, I know I haven't made an instructable for a very long time but I'm back and I would like to share my newest project with you. Since the beginning of high school I have made about 10 ceramic ocarinas and 3 wooden ocarinas…
Music is organized sound. I like to give students opportunities to organize sound and icons for sounds before we work with organizing notation. One of the ways I do that is to create sound songs. We take a basic grid and brainstorms sounds we can make with our bodies (APPROPRIATE sounds *giggle*) and then draw shapes and simple picture to represent them. We draw them into the grid so that they are organized and then perform them for each other. FUN! Another thing I like to do is work with ready icons for body percussion. I introduce this in Kindergarten, but we review it in 1st and 2nd grades and add a composing element to it. Until recently I used a pretty old set of body percussion clip art to create a slide show. Here's what the new version looks like: I used this with some classes this week and they loved it! We talked about one sound to the beat means a quarter note and one picture in each square. After we add barred eighth notes or two sounds on one beat we'll take some time to compose our own. I'll print out little copies of all the body percussion actions and they will place them on the squares in the grid and perform. When we finish or as we begin to use this activity just to review or as a warm-up I'll add some body percussion worksheets to the end of class or to workstations. I'll be using these: Quick enough to do in the last ten minutes of class or at a workstation, I really like making connections to reading and writing AND music. Check out the Body Percussion set HERE.
Piano music doesn't have to be all classical, all the time! Here's what you need to know about getting started with jazz piano chord progressions.
