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By Mom Unplugged, January 14, 2009 10:25 am

Thanks to a wonderfully creative music teacher at my children’s Montessori school, the latest fad around our house are little homemade guitars/harps like that shown above. The kids are loving putting different sized rubber bands around my food storage containers and then experimenting with the sounds produced.

The sound reminds me of a kalimba. It’s a little hard on me when I need to put away some food and can’t find any containers, but…oh well. I can adjust.

These simple little string instruments made me think that a post about quick and easy homemade musical instruments might be fun to write. I obviously won’t be anywhere close to covering all the homemade musical options, so if you think of something I forgot, please leave your idea in the comments.

If you are here because you are looking for musical instrument ideas, then be sure to read the comments for more ideas. Unplug Your Kids readers are very creative!

Here are my ideas:

• Let gourds or squash dry out. Once they are completely dry, the exterior will be hard and when you shake them, the seeds will rattle around inside. You’ll have some nice, natural maracas.

• Quick maracas: Fill plastic Easter eggs with rice or lentils and tape shut. Instant shakers!

• Paper plate maracas: Put some dried beans on a small paper plate. Cover with another, upside down paper plate. Staple the two plates together around the edges to seal them shut. Add a cardboard or popsicle stick handle if you want, then decorate. Here is ours:

• Wrap tissue paper around a fine tooth comb and make “Doo-doo-doo” noises through it for a kazoo sound.

• Flip over empty cylindrical cardboard oatmeal containers and bang on the bottom to make a drum.

• Line up a row of glasses and fill each with a different amount of water. Tap them with a spoon and note the different pitches. Play a tune!

• If you have a thin-rimmed wine glass, fill it with water. Wet your finger and rub it slowly and gently around the rim to create your own glass harmonica. It might take a bit of experimenting to figure out exactly what pressure you need, but the results are impressive. Experiment with more water in the glass and less water. What happens to the pitch? What about an empty glass?
  NOTE: Benjamin Franklin invented a mechanical glass harmonica like this modern one based on his design (he called it an “armonica”):

If you have never heard it, you must listen to the rather fairy-like sound of an armonica!

Can you play a tune with several glasses with different levels of water? You might not sound this good, but it’ll be fun!

• Blow across a glass soda or beer bottle like you would play a flute. Unless you play the flute, it’ll take a bit of practice. Adjust the angle of the bottle against your lips until you get it right. It will make a lovely tone. Different levels of liquid will produce different tones. What about lining up many bottles with different levels of liquid and playing a song?

(NOTE: Great related link - Bottled Music. This link tells exactly how much water is needed in a twenty ounce bottle to produce each particular note of the scale, and even has instructions for playing Row Row Row your boat on the bottles.)

• Craft idea: Cricket Chirping Sticks:

I didn’t think these sounded too much like crickets, but they do make a cool sound for your musical instrument collection! Learn how to make them here.

• Another craft idea: Sandpaper blocks - Wrap sandpaper around two blocks and attach it to the back with thumbtacks. For easier handling you might want to attach a knob to the back of each block (with glue or screws). Rub the blocks together for a cool sound. Try coarser and finer paper for different sounds.

And of course, the obvious: turn your 2 year-old loose in your pots and pans cupboard for lots of drums, cymbals and noise music.

That’s it for what’s in my brain right now, but Googling “homemade musical instruments” produces lots of cool results.

Here are links to a few of my favorites:

Jingle Sticks

Rainstick

Didgeridoo

Inventing Homemade Instruments with Math and Measurement (a wonderful website that teaches the science of music!)

Artists Helping Children (a very long list of many musical instrument craft links - useful!)

For a book that has some fun instrument games and activity ideas for young (preschool) children to use their homemade (or non-homemade) simple instruments, consider 101 Rhythm Instrument Activities: for Young Children by Abigail Flesch Connors:

NOTE: This is a great book to use with young children, older ones might find it boring.

Comments (4)

By Mom Unplugged, December 14, 2008 10:25 pm

The theme for this week’s Unplugged Project was curly.

We didn’t get to it this week and instead, put up our Christmas tree and such. The weather today was kind of cold, snowy and windy though. Very much a curl up in front of the fire with a good book day. Does that count?

The forecast is so bad that I suspect that there may not be school tomorrow. If that is the case, then perhaps we will get to a curly project after all!

So, please check out the curly projects in Mr. Linky, and if you want, come back here tomorrow evening to see if it was a snow day/curly project day, or not.

If you did a curly project this week, then please put a link to your project (not just your blog) in Mr. Linky below. If you did not, then please do not link…but read more about how to join in here. We’d love to have you next week!

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In honor of the upcoming Winter/Summer solstice (December 21st), the theme for next week’s Unplugged Project will be:

Dark / Light

You can choose according to your hemisphere, or simply according to your wishes. The point is to just enjoy!

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Comments (0)

By Mom Unplugged, December 10, 2008 8:24 pm

I promised an update on these candles (that we made out of old crayon bits) once we had tried burning them, so here it is!

Actually I had promised it the following day, but - oops…didn’t quite get to it until now, nearly two months later. Oh well, never let it be said that I blog more than I live (not at the moment anyway).

As you can see, we had a truly lovely candlelight dinner with our cupcake candles:

I had hoped that the “cupcake” portion might continue to burn after the birthday candle was gone, but it didn’t. I expect that if you mixed some real candle-making wax in here along with a few crayons for color, they might burn longer.

But on the plus side, now we have some wonderful, chunky, cupcake-shaped crayons that the children are enjoying tremendously!

Link to my wax themed Unplugged Project post: Birthday Cupcake Candles.

Comments (5)

By Mom Unplugged, December 1, 2008 9:38 am

OK, weather was a perfect theme for us this week because after a nice Thanksgiving trip to Upstate NY in our small plane, we are snow/iced in at the moment in Rolla, Missouri. Any Rolla readers out there?

Our weather Unplugged Project will be chipping ice off the wings of our plane so we can try and leave this afternoon. Wish us luck!

What was your weather Unplugged Project ? If you participated this week, then please put a link to your project (not just your blog - we want to be able to find your project easily) in Mr. Linky below. If you did not join in this week, then please don’t link. Read more about how to join in here .

The theme for next week’s Unplugged Project will be:

Fluffy

I hope to see you then, and have fun!

Comments (16)

By Mom Unplugged, November 24, 2008 8:36 am

We did a fun thankful project last Thanksgiving for our Unplugged Project, but I felt we needed to find something different for this year’s thankful theme.

For a while now I have also been collecting wine corks to use for a craft. I thought about this all week, and a miraculous inspiration came to me (for which I am thankful). Thankful Necklaces!

Here’s what you’ll need: wine corks, scissors, newspapers and magazines, white glue and/or Modge Podge, plus a necklace cord (yarn, string, ribbon, chain or leather perhaps?). You’ll also need to make a hole all the way through the corks, we used a drill.

First drill a hole all the way through the corks. The hole should be near the top of the cork:

Next comes the fun part. Sit down with old newspapers and magazines and cut out words and small images that represent what you are thankful for. Make sure they are small, because they’ll need to fit on the cork.

Once you have all your cutouts, use a small paint brush to paint white glue onto the back of each word or picture and stick it on the cork. Keep in mind that there is not much room on a cork so you should start with the larger items and fit the smaller ones on top if necessary.

Don’t worry about covering the hole. My daughter left hers uncovered but I covered mine and later poked a skewer through to open it. If you do cover the holes though, be careful not to put anything too important over the top or it will be messed up when you open the hole later. (You could probably also drill the hole at the end after the decoupage is done and dry).

When you are done with the gluing and are satisfied with the result, cover the entire cork with watered down white glue or Modge Podge using your paintbrush. It will take a few coats to become nice and shiny and hard.

Once the cork bead is completely dry, open the hole with a skewer if you covered it up with decoupage.

String the necklace cord through the bead and voila! You have a thankful necklace!

This would be pretty and unusual combined with other beads. Or how about some funky earrings?

You don’t have to stick with thankful as a theme either. You could try colors, patterns, animals, anything!

I think I’ll make more of these. They were so fun and the creative possibilities seem truly limitless. Plus, I really like how they turned out!

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Did you do the thankful Unplugged Project with us this week? If so, then please link to your project post (not just your blog) in Mr. Linky below. If not, but you think this sounds fun, then read more about how to join in the weekly Unplugged Projects here. We’d love to have you!

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Next week’s Unplugged Project theme will be:

Weather

Have fun!

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