Make Music

Bang on your flower pots, string your your shoebox guitar, and make somebottle maracas with this week's round-up of music-making activities andprintables! Remember that some great learning can come from making

some great music and that's what this week is all about.

Table of ContentsWeek 5: Make Music

Make Flower Pot MusicShoebox Guitar

Paper Plate TambourinesMake a Spin Drum

DANIEL TIGER'S Neighborhood: Feel the MusicBottle Maracas!

Drinking Glass XylophoneMusic Memory GameMusic Note Pattenrs

MARTHA SPEAKS: Sing!Creative Writing: Music Prompt

Learn to Play Piano!FIZZY'S LUNCH LAB Tune Box

More to Explore!

Bang on your flower pots, string your shoebox guitar, and make some bottle maracas with this week's round-up of music-making activities and printables! Remember that some great learning can come from making some great music, and that's what this week is all about.

Make Flower Pot Music

Shoebox Guitar

Conduct Your Own Chorus!

Paper Plate Tambourines

Make a Spin Drum

Bottle Maracas!

Drinking Glass Xylophone

Music Memory Game

Music Note Pattenrs

Creative Writing: Music Prompt

Learn to Play Piano!

Fizzy's Lunchlab Tune Box

Clay flower pots

Wooden spoon

String

Notebook rings

Place from which to hang the pots

Empty shoe box

5-6 jumbo rubber bands

Pen or pencil

Scissors

2 paper plates

Dried beans

A stapler

Magic markers, stickers, glitter glue, etc

An empty frozen juice container with both metal ends

Craft knife

White glue

Yarn

2 beads

Embroidery needle

2 plastic drink bottles

Rocks

Dried uncooked pasta

Rice

Masking tape

6 tall glass glasses, bottles, or jars (preferably the same shape and size)

Water

Food coloring or colorful soft drink mix

Metal spoon, wooden spoon, or wooden popsicle sticks

Jug

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Make Flower Pot Music

Turn flower pots into a unique musical instrument with this inventive activity!Your child will be a musician in no time and this activity will give him a greatopportunity to learn about music and sound. Your child will be able to hearand analyze the different sounds he produces with his very ownhomemade instrument. Just as importantly, he'll learn that music iseverywhere if you know how to listen.

What You Need:

Clay flower potsWooden spoonStringNotebook ringsPlace from which to hang the pots

What to Do:

1. Collect clay flower pots with a hole in each of the pot bottoms. Use four or five different sizes.2. Thread a piece of string through the bottom of each pot and attach it to a notebook ring placed

inside the pot.3. Hang the pots upside-down at different lengths, so that when they are struck with the wooden

spoon, they will not swing and hit each other.4. Invite your child to hit the pots with the wooden spoon to make music. Talk about the different

sounds the different-sized pots make. Older children can try to imitate a tune they know or maketheir own.

If your child would like to show off his newfound musical talent, gather friends and family members for aconcert!

Adapted with permission from "Squish, Sort, Paint & Build: Over 200 Easy Learning Center Activities."Copyright 1996 by Sharon MacDonald. Used by Permission of Gryphon House, Inc., Maryland. All RightsReserved.Downloaded from Education.com

Make a Shoe Box Guitar

This is just one of many ways that you can reuse household items andmake neat crafts from them: make this guitar out of an old shoebox forsome musical fun, while saving room in the landfill.

What You Need:

Empty shoe box5-6 jumbo rubber bandsPen or pencilScissors

What You Do:

1. Start by tracing a circle about three or four inches wide on the lid ofthe shoe box.

2. Cut out the circle so there is now a hole in the lid of the shoe box.3. Put the lid back on the box and wrap the rubber bands lengthwise around the box and over the

hole.4. Put the pen or pencil under the rubber bands on one side.5. Now strum your guitar!

Excerpted From "Help Your Parents Save the Planet" Copyright 2009 by Gregory Rutty. Used byPermission of Workman Publishing Co. Inc., New York All Rights Reserved.Downloaded from Education.com

Make Paper Plate Tambourines

Looking for a noisemaker that's more musical than your typicalpreschooler's banging and clanging? Try this quick arts and crafts activitythat will produce a homemade paper plate tambourine! It’s easy to makewith supplies you probably have on hand, and it makes a great toy. Nowonder it’s a classic!

What You Need:

2 paper platesA handful of dried beansA staplerMagic markers, stickers, glitter glue, etc

What You Do:

1. Set one paper plate on the table and have your child drop a good handful of beans on it.2. Top with the other plate, face side down, and staple the edges of the plates together. Make sure

the staples are close enough together that no beans can escape!3. When the tambourine is fully constructed, hand your child the art supplies and let him go crazy with

the decorations! Stickers, finger paint, even feathers and ribbons will give this quick craft a touch offlair to last through many musical numbers!

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Spin Drum

Rhythm masters and percussion artists in training, have some fun holdinga beat with some homemade drums! Help your child craft a spin drum likethose found in both Peru and Japan. Instead of being played with hands orsticks, this unique drum has to be twisted and turned to play. Thisdrummer’s activity is sure to spark an interest in learning about musicalinstruments from other cultures.

What You Need:

An empty frozen juice container with both metal endsScissorsCraft knifeA pencilWhite glueYarn2 beadsEmbroidery needleStickers

What You Do:

1. Explain to your daughter that she is making a spin drum. Show her pictures of these drums bothfrom Japan and Peru. The beads strike the drum heads when the drum is turned.

2. Cut the juice container down so it is approximately two inches tall.3. Use a craft knife to make a hole in the side of the container. It should be in the center, one inch

from each side. Push the eraser end of the pencil through the hole and into the drum. Stop pushingwhen the eraser presses into the opposite side of the drum. Glue in place.

4. Lay the drum flat on the table so the pencil hole is at 6 o’clock. Use the craft knife to poke twosmall holes at 3 and 9 o-clock. Using the embroidery needle, thread a 13-inch piece of yarnthrough these holes. Tie a bead onto each end.

5. Close the drum with the missing metal lid. Glue into place.6. Decorate the drum with stickers.

Your daughter can play her drum by twisting the pencil back and forth so the beads bounce off the drumheads. Soon she will be keeping time to the music as she twists and turns to the beat.  

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DANIEL TIGER'S Neighborhood: Feel the Music

Music is a great way to explore feelings. While you play this game from PBS KIDS' Daniel Tiger'sNeighborhood you can build vocabulary by talking about what feelings the music makes your child feel.Click here to get started.

© Copyright 2006-2012 Education.com All Rights Reserved.

How to Make Maracas

Cinco de Mayo celebrates an important battle in Mexican history. Althoughthe battle took place across the border, the holiday is widely celebrated inAmerica by people of Mexican heritage. Why not take part in the festivities?These maracas make a racket, and they couldn’t be easier to make…

What You Need:

2 plastic drink bottlesRocksDried uncooked pastaBeansRiceMasking tapeMarkers

What You Do:

1. Rinse out the plastic bottles. Talk to your child about the fact that each of the materials on the table(rocks, pasta, beans, and rice) can be used to fill the maracas. Discuss the qualities of each of thefiller materials and ask her to make some predictions about what each material would sound likeand what it would do if it filled a bottle (for example, “The rocks are big, so they’d be hard to shake”or “The rice is light so the bottle wouldn’t feel very heavy”).

2. Allow your child to fill the plastic bottle with the fill material of her choice. Close the bottle, let hershake it, and tell her she can exchange it for something else if she’d like. This is a great time toallow your child to experiment with different fill materials. How is the sound made by rocks in thebottle different than the sound made by rice?

3. Once your child has settled on the perfect fill materials, place a lid on each bottle and secure withmasking tape. Cover the entire bottle with layers of masking tape and give your child the markersso she can decorate them. Strike up the music and shake!

© Copyright 2006-2012 Education.com All Rights Reserved.

Design a Great Glass Xylophone!

This amusing activity incorporates music into an educational scienceexperiment! Your child will love learning about sound waves as he makesand plays sweet-sounding melodies on his very own glass xylophone. He’lldelight in exploring the effect of varying amounts of water in each glass,and will get to make up some enchanting tunes at the same time!

What You Need:

6 tall glass glasses, bottles, or jars (preferably the same shape andsize)WaterFood coloring or colorful soft drink mixMetal spoon, wooden spoon, or wooden popsicle sticksJug

What You Do:

1. Get your child to line up the bottles or glasses in a row.2. Ask your child to tap gently on each of the glasses. What sort of sound is created? Do the glasses

all make the same sound?3. Put the water in the jug and get your child to mix in the food coloring or drink mix.4. With your child, carefully pour the water into the glasses, making sure there is a different level of

water in each glass.5. Get your child to tap the glasses again. What sort of noise do they make now? Do all of the

glasses make the same sound now?6. Encourage your child to vary the tones by changing the amounts of water.7. Invite your child to play a tune! Adjust the musical notes that are created by adding more or less

water to each glass.

What's Going On?

When your child taps the glasses, he generates sound waves that travel through the water. When thereis water in the glasses, the sound waves are altered as they need to travel through water. The morewater is present in a glass, the lower the sound note.

Variation:

If you are using bottles for this activity, get your child to blow into the bottle and to listen to the soundproduced. Are they the same or different from the sound he gets when he taps the bottles? He might besurprised, as the result is the opposite. The more water in the bottle, the higher the note. This is becausethe sound waves created when the bottle is blown travel through the air rather than the water. The lesswater present in the bottle, the more air there is!

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Let’s Make Music!Which music note comes next? Help finish the pattern by cutting out the

missing notes and gluing them on the correct row.

MARTHA SPEAKS: Sing!

Explore the words of music with this activity from PBS KIDS' Martha Speaks. Click here to get started!

Image: Marth Speaks: Courtesy of all characters and underlying marterials from the Martha books TM andSusan Meddaugh. All other characters and underlying materials TM and 2013 WGBH.

© Copyright 2006-2012 Education.com All Rights Reserved.

All musical instruments, including the piano, use SEVEN basic notes: A, B, C, D, E, F, G. A piano has a total of 88 keys. These seven notes are played on the white keys, repeated over and over, but the pitch gets higher as they go from left to right.

Cut out these markers and tape them to the correct keys on your piano as a guide!

OCTAVE: An octave is a series of 8 notesin order. All notes can be played at manydifferent octaves; it is the same note, butwith a higher or lower pitch. The keyshighlighted in yellow represent an octave.

SHARP (#): This symbol “sharp” means that the noteis played one half-stop above (on the black keys).

FLAT (b): This symbol “flat” means that thenote is played one half-step below (on the black keys).

CHORD: A chord is many notes played together, at the same time to create a harmony.

FIZZY'S LUNCH LAB Tune Box

Learn some new lyrics (and words) with PBS KIDS' Fizzy's Lunch Lab. Then, make up some of your own.Click here to get started!

© Copyright 2006-2012 Education.com All Rights Reserved.

More to Explore!

You and your kids can get creative, or just have fun monkeying around with PBS KIDS Curious George.

Image Credit: Courtesy of (R) & (C) 2013 Universal Studios and/or HMH. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. PBSKIDS (R) Public Broadcasting Service. FOR PROMOTIONAL USE ONLY.

© Copyright 2006-2012 Education.com All Rights Reserved.