Create Your Own Instrument

Gather as much junk as you can, raiding the recycling bin or cleaning out a closet. Make sure your collection of junk represents a wide variety of materials. Here are a few ideas of things that will work well:

• Empty yogurt tubs with lids (make sure you clean them out first)

• Metal coffee cans or any kind of corrugated tin

• Pencils

• Rubber bands

• Cereal boxes

• Spiral notebooks

• Wooden spoons

• Cardboard tubes from a used roll of toilet paper or paper towels 

Explore all the different kinds of sounds you can make with your collections. For example, an easy way to make a sound on the yogurt container like a drum. Can you find other ways to make a sound with the same object? Try filling it with various objects and shaking it. Compare the difference in sound between shaking a container full of pennies and a container full of rubber bands and a container full of cotton balls. (Cotton balls are really quiet - listen carefully and you will hear them.) Using a pencil, tap in different spots on the container to discover different sounds on the same object.

Sort all of your objects according to sound. Decide on categories, such as "metal," "wood," "plastic," and "paper." Label a box or plastic tub with each category name and store their found-object percussion instruments. Be prepared to make some decisions together: should cardboard be included in the "paper" category or should it have its own category?

Create an inventory or list of your sorted instruments. A completed example might look like this:

Sing a favorite song and use one of your new found-object instruments for accompaniment!

Watch the percussion group STOMP as they use everyday objects in all their performances. In the first video they play a piece with the Harlem Globetrotters, using only basketballs. In the second, they use brooms and trash cans to make music. After watching, ask, “Does watching this make you want to add some instruments to your collection?”