Monday, 30 April 2007

Making waste music to your ears

In my country parents who send their children to music schools usually end up buying an electric organ or a piano if they can afford it. That is a very expansive musical instrument to invest in if you are not too sure if your children are musically inclined. Start them on it when they are much older and you are concern that they may find it more difficult to pick up.

Why not start by building up their interest as they grow? For toddlers incorporate toys that can create sounds and see how they react to them. When they are old enough to, let them create their own musical instrument. Form a playgroup so that the children can express their musical talents and imitate what their fellow playmates have learned to create.

These are what you can start collecting to create musical instruments:

1) Any empty containers in any material eg, biscuit tins, plastic bottles, etc.
2) Metal bottle caps
3) Tissue Boxes
4) Disposal chopsticks
5) Rubber bands
6) Cardboard from boxes
7) Strings
8) Sands and gravels
9) "Y" shape twigs
10) Scraps of paper or fabric to decorate instrument
11) Toilet roll tube

Here are some ideas and instructions to work on with the children:

Bonko from Exploratorium

Bottle Cap Tambourines and Bottled Music from FamilyFun

Box Guitar from EnchantedLearning

Straw Oboes from MCREL

Earthlink provides instructions for creating simple to more complex musical instrument.

You think this will not work? But then this is how music is being taught to the children at Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra through its "Let’s Beat It weekend"!

Now that I have your interest; need some help decorating your recycled musical instrument? The kids will love the jazz and colours.

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