Homemade Musical Instruments for Children: Make Your Own Lute, Maracas, Boom-Bah and Rain Stick

Homemade instruments are a great way to create creativity and fun in your home or classroom. The first 3 ideas are from Kids Make Music! by Avery Hart and Paul Mantell.

Tissue Box Lute:

"These instruments are simple to create and play and the sound is unique. The secret is using different sizes of rubber bands, thick and thin, for the strings." "Stretch rubber bands around the [tissue] box, the short way, and pluck."

Paper Bag Maracas:

"Start by decorating paper bags [like a brown/white lunch bag] .... Fill them with dried beans and tie with yarn."

The Boom-Bah:

"An old pogo stick is the ideal spine for this unique instrument, but a broom stick with a rubber foot is fine, too. (If you don't have a rubber foot, place the boom-bah inside a carton or glue felt to the bottom, and it won't make marks on the floor.) Once you've got the spine painted, decorated and ready for booming, it's time to add the bahs - jingling keys, bells, bottle caps - any noise maker you can think of. Attach them with the strong, round staples used to hold telephone wires, or nail things loosely on the stick."

The book shows a picture of rubber bands connecting pot lids and then wrapped around the stick. They used safety pins to attatch jingle bells to a stabilized ring on the stick. They also used baby rattles, keys and pie plates.

"Playing the boom-bah isn't very hard - all you do is thump it on the floor, while singing your heart out to the beat."

Cactus Rain Stick:

Fill an empty wrapping paper roll with rice and tape ends closed. Poke straight pins from one side through to the other up and down the roll and decorate. The pins are stuck into the cardboard randomly so that when the cylinder is turned upside down, the rice falls through bouncing off the straight pins, creating a rain stick sound.

Go To Page: 1

Articles in this Topic    Discussions in this Topic