Making musical instruments with children is a great way to get them away from the TV and doing something creative. Musical instruments are fantastic tools that you can use to introduce the concept of music, rhythm, song and much more. Another benefit to making your own musical drum instruments is that by doing so you can not only save yourself some money, but you can also spend quality time with your children making a craft that they can get excited about. There are many different materials that you can use to make musical drum crafts. Most people will have everything that they need to make a drum in their homes. Here are some examples of methods that you can try to make your own drum set at home:
Empty containers make great drums
Just about any empty container with a lid can be transformed into a drum. Some of the best containers for drum crafts include oatmeal containers, margarine containers and large yogurt containers. These containers make drums that are just the right size for small hands. You can decorate your drum in a number of different ways. You can cover the container with construction paper or use paints to paint right on the face of the container. You can add strings of beads or feathers that run down the side of the drum and mimic the same decorations that you used on the base of the drum to decorate the drumsticks. You could also experiment with sounds by putting different objects into the containers and listening to how the drumming noise changes.
Make your own drum from scratch
If using an empty container seems like too ambitious of a project for you, you could transform and ordinary household object into a drum and still have fun. Pots, pans, plastic containers and even boxes make great drums when you use spoons or sticks to drum on the bottoms of them. You may notice that different materials make different sounds. For example, the sound of a metal pot drum will sound very different from the sound of a plastic container drum. By making simple observations like these, you create possibilities for education and even promote creative thinking for what type of drum your child could create next. If you need to create a top or a lid for your drum, try stretching a piece of fabric or a cloth over the opening of the drum and securing that fabric around the mouth of the container with a rubber band.
Use your imagination
A drum is probably going to be the most forgiving of all of the musical instrument crafts that you may make. Because it is virtually impossible to go wrong with a musical drum craft, take it upon yourself to be creative with the materials that you use and the decorating decisions that you make. You could also think beyond the drum to what other instruments you could create. You could even create enough instruments to form a band and have friends or family members join in the fun. There are many different kinds of drums that are used by professional musicians. You can try to mimic those different types of drums in your craft. For example, you can make two smaller drums and secure them together so as to play them at once. These drums now become bongos rather than the traditional drum. You can apply this concept to virtually any kind of instrument but the drum is especially simple for both parents and kids because playing with drums is a lot more simple than playing most other instruments.
Leave a Reply