I’m doing a unit on “found instruments” with the 3rd and 4th graders at school. This week they brought instruments they found from home and we had a great time playing them. First we grouped the instruments according to how they are played, such as: shakers, scrappers, or tapped. Next we made up a recipe for chocolate chip cookies and extracted ingredients and phrases to become our rhythms. Then the rhythms were assigned to each group. For example, the tapped instrument group said the words, “chocolate chips, chocolate chips,” over and over while tapping the rhythm of the words. The scraper group said and played, “rest, rest, rest, eggs!” while the shaker group said and played, “bake them in the oven.”
We layered in the different rhythms one group at a time and it sounded, well….. pretty good. Especially as we talked about beat and how each group had to keep the same beat though they were playing different rhythms.
The students also had a jam session playing to the song, “Pots and Pans” by The Bacon Brothers from the CD called Dog Train. http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_0_13?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-music&field-keywords=pots+and+pans&sprefix=pots+and+pans It’s a really fun piece that has pots and pans banging in the music. Another fun song to play recycled or found instruments to is a Sesame Street song called “Clink Clank”. http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-music&field-keywords=clink+clank&x=0&y=0
Let your children loose in the kitchen or back yard, have them gather up “instruments”, put some music on and have a great jam session of your own!
My favorite homemade inst are always the random ones Jeffrey comes up with, that usually don't make noise but in his imagination they do! He was VERY attached to a random hunk of cardboard for about 6 months because it was his guitar.
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