Description:
Make a pellet drum and guiro style instruments.
Links to EYFS:
Personal, Social and Emotional Development
Communication and Language
Physical Development
Literacy
Mathematics
Understanding of the World
Expressive Arts and Design
Activity:
Pellet/Rattle Drum.
We found lots of conkers that had dropped around the site and wanted to put them to good use. One idea we had was to try and make a pellet drum (also called a rattle drum) using them. We started by asking the children to find a medium thick stick. We also needed string, cardboard and the conkers. The children cut out a rectangular shape of cardboard with scissors and used a palm drill to drill a hole through it for one end of the string to pass through. They again used the palm drill to drill a hole through two of the conkers they had collected. They threaded a piece of string through each of the conkers and tied a knot in one of the ends. The other end was threaded through the hole in the cardboard and again tied in a knot to stop it from pulling through. They taped the stick to the centre of the cardboard and folded it over on itself, trapping the stick inside. The children decided to decorate their pellet drums and drew pictures and patterns on the cardboard. Our pellet drum was now ready to be tested and worked beautifully!
Guiro.
To make our simple guiro inspired percussion instrument we needed lots of pine cones, wool and some sticks. We asked the children to look for a suitable stick and then cut it to size using secateurs. They then tied several pinecones to the stick using wool and used either another stick or a pinecone to run along the other pinecones attached to the stick in order to make a sound.
Home Activity:
What percussion instruments can you make at home?
If you need some inspiration, click the below link to the Activity Village homemade musical instruments post: https://www.activityvillage.co.uk/musical-instruments.