June 12 Family Friday

Can't Stop the Music

Music is all around us- from the professionals who perform on stage or record our favorite songs, to the nursery rhymes we sing, the wind chimes blowing in the wind, or the vibration of instrument strings. Join us this week as we create our own instruments and move and create to many different types of music!

Activity One:

Make Your Own Instruments

Pots and pans, paper towel rolls, glasses filled with water, paper plates and beads.... Musical instruments can be made out of just about anything! Learn a little bit about the science behind sound and then either follow our DIY instructions or experiment to make your own musical instruments out of the things you find a home.

What is sound?

Click on the image to visit SciShow Kids and get the conversation started.

Make Vibrations

To make instruments, we will need to create some vibrations. What materials can you use at home to create vibrations?

Experiment with materials you find around your house to see what sounds you can make.

Need ideas? Click through the next slides to create some DIY instruments.

Tin Can Drums

Use empty cans and balloons or wax paper and rubber bands to create drums.

Cut the bottom off of a balloon and stretch it over the can. Use a rubber band or tape to hold it in place. The more tension you create with the balloon across the surface, the higher the sound will be when you hit your drum.

Paper Plate Tambourine

Decorate two paper plates and then fill them with unpopped pop corn, beads, dry beans, jingle bells, pasta... anything that might make a noise when shaken.

Use a stapler or tape to seal the two plates together. Want to practice some fine motor skills? Use a hole punch to punch holes all around the outside of your plates and then use yarn to string the plates together.

Box Guitar

Use a cereal box, shoe box, or kleenex box and rubber bands to create a guitar.

If your box does not already have an opening, like a shoe box or a kleenex box does, cut a hole in the middle of your box.

Stretch rubber bands over the opening of your box. Use different thicknesses of bands if you have them. When you pluck the rubber bands, they will make different noises depending on their thickness and how tightly they are stretched.

Wax Paper Kazoo

Cut a piece of wax paper just big enough to cover the bottom of a toilet paper roll or a paper towel roll.

Attach the wax paper to the bottom of the roll with rubber bands.

Pierce a hole along the side of the roll to let the sound escape.

Practice making different noises in your kazoo to cause different kinds of vibrations.

Water Xylaphone

Line glasses up on a table and fill them with different amounts of water. Tap the sides of the glasses with a spoon to hear the sound they make. Experiment with different levels of water until you get the sounds you want.

Once you have your perfect sounds, you can add food coloring to the glasses to color code your sounds and create you own song to play.

Activity Two:

Learn to Conduct

Who is the conductor? What does he or she do? Click to watch a short clip from Classical MPR about conductors and then try it out for yourself!

Practice Your Conducting Skills

Click on the image to draw along with the different movements conductors make with their batons.

Draw right on your screen and see if you can keep in time with the music. To play the music, click on the headphone icon on the bottom right of each slide.

Print Copies to Draw on At Home

Would you like to use these time signatures at home? Print the .pdf and use as tracing sheets with markers, paint, or under plastic with sensory materials.

Activity Three:

Move to the Music

Music can show a variety of emotions that get us moving and dancing in different ways.

Play freeze dance to the following music selections and explore how you can move to the emotions of excited, calm, and angry.

Excited Lines

Move like excited lines to this upbeat music! Remember, when the music stops you have to freeze!

Calm Lines

Move like calm lines to this slowy, easy music! Remember, when the music stops you have to freeze!

Angry Lines

Move like angry lines to this loud, fast music! Remember, when the music stops you have to freeze!

Activity Four:

Create to the Music

Create to Music

Artists like Kandinsky have been inspired by music to create works of art. Now that you have had practive moving to music, lets try creating artwork to the same musical selections.

Artwork: Composition IV by Wassily Kandinsky, 1911, Oil on canvas - Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfallen, Düsseldorf

Draw Excited Lines!

Use a black crayon or oil pastel to draw lines to the music. Use both thin and thick lines and push hard with your crayon or oil pastel.

Click the image to draw along to the music!

Draw Calm Lines.

Use a black crayon or oil pastel to draw lines to the music. Use both thin and thick lines and push hard with your crayon or oil pastel.

Click the image to draw along to the music!

Draw Angry Lines!

Use a black crayon or oil pastel to draw lines to the music. Use both thin and thick lines and push hard with your crayon or oil pastel.

Click the image to draw along to the music!

Step Two:

After you have drawn your lines, choose two or three colors of watercolor to paint on top of your lines!

To get a look like Kandinsky, be careful not to let your colors touch until one of the colors is dry on your paper.

Need to get brigher color? Dip your brush in the water and then gently swirl your brush in the watercolor paint and count to 10. Then add the color to your paper.

Activity Five:

Wild Instruments

Camille Saint-Saens composed The Carnival of the Animals in 1886 to express in music some of the silly habits of animals.

Explore the music, read along with selections of the book by Jack Prelutsky, and make some musical animals of your own!