Homemade Musical Instruments.....(on the cheap)

I've been using the Mother Goose Time pre-school curriculum for two years now.  It's really a fun program; sometime mid-month FedEx delivers a school bus box filled with 20 days worth of pre-school materials.  Each day is bagged and ready for use.  Specific items not always found in the junk/art closet are included in the package.  Other supplies like:  markers, scissors, glue.....the basics need to be provided by you.  Detailed lesson plans with objectives are provided; however, I follow the teacher plans very loosely.  I've found that some of the activities are best done with larger groups of children.  Anyway, December's theme is Sights and Sounds of Winter and today's bag contained cardboard pieces and yarn to make a paper violin, which was a real hit around here seeing that three of us play violin.  Then I played A Classical Kids Christmas cd and Peter and Maria took turns (and if taking turns means screaming at one another and grabbing at the paper violin, then that's what they did) playing the violin to the beat of the music.

Playing along to O Come Little Children.

 I had to think fast because Maria WAS NOT happy one bit that Peter had this cool violin and she had nothing.  Looking around I saw a pile of X-large rubberbands and knew that would do the trick.  I grabbed a small box from the basement and stretched the rubberbands around the box.  Voila!  A second instrument for her.  And this one actually makes music when strummed.  It was a hit!  So easy, so cheap and fun to play with.

Once she started strumming away, Peter was more than happy to trade off the paper violin.  This activity kept them busy for quite some time, which gave me an opportunity to read with Joseph.

After the rubberband box did its time as an instrument, I found these two using it as a zoo cage for their small stuffed animals.  What do you get two kids for Christmas whose favorite "toys" are plastic bags, rubberbands, and boxes?

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