Making Music

With so many of our little ones music groups being cancelled at the moment, I wanted to bring you something that would enable you to still have that special music time with your child.

There is no doubt about it that music has many benefits, including language, cognitive, and physical development, when we dance to our favorite songs. In addition to this, it allows us to express our emotions and feelings. Indeed music is very important in our little ones lives.

We don't need to go far to discover that in fact we have all the things to make music around us. Our kitchen cupboards are full of different things, all that makes different noises to excite the ears.

This is also a great opportunity to rummage through the recycling and create your own instruments.

This activity can be adapted easily for various ages. Even if your child just wants to dance around the kitchen with a wooden spoon or sing in the bathroom with a hair brush. When their lives have been turned upside down, I think it is now more important than ever before, for them to express themselves.

A simple activity for little ones which has huge cognitive developmental impact, is to provide paper cups and a dry good items such as popcorn kernals. The child can fill the cups and dump out the kernals. This will develop not only their fine motor skills, but the cognitive areas such as cause and effect, spatial awareness, gravity, and problem solving.

Once your child is happy with the amount in each cup. Use tape to seal another cup on top. Your child can now shake their shaker to their favourite nursery ryhmes and songs.

For a more artsy approach, I recommend making a shaker using a kitchen roll and a type of dry food. Seal the bottom of the tube with paper and tape. Fill tube with a small amount of dried food or little stones, then seal the top with paper and tape once again. Finish with decorating tube with paint.

Of course if you have any boxes, you can decorate these, to become an instant drum.

For older children:

How about making a rainmaker? To do this, seal one end of a kitchen roll with paper and tape. Then insert toothpicks into the kitchen roll and pierce a hole to the other side. If the cardboard tube is too tough, make little holes carefully with a knife or with scissors with adult supervision, then insert toothpicks. Do this throughout the length of the tube. If the toothpicks are bigger then the circumference, simply cut them down to size. Add dry food, make sure it is small enough to pass thruogh the holes, small rocks work well for this too. Seal the top with paper and tape.

Then cover the outside of the tube with paper and tape to stop the toothpicks being able to slide out. Alternatively place a small anout of glue in each of the toothpicks holes. Paint and decorate your tube.

Music class has commenced!

Enjoy :)