We’re happy to be featuring our good friend, Daria from World Music for Children with more great music activities for kids! To kick off our “Under the Sea” theme, we used Daria’s convenient instructions to put together an awesome Ocean Drum!
This diy drum for kids is pretty simple to assemble – an adult will have some cutting and taping to do, but otherwise the kids can have at it! We used an empty granola bar box for the body of the drum and the clear plastic front of a box from a toy we had gotten for Christmas for the front of the drum. My little guy filled it with small blue, green, and silver beads to look like the ocean.
He was in the mood to do some cutting of his own, so the fine motor and visual motor fun continued as he cut up small squares of tissue paper and added them to his box by painting glue all over it and sticking them on. Once it was all dry, he loved tilting his drum from side to side to make the sound of the rolling waves and shaking it to hear the beads rattling around inside!
Daria suggests playing the drum in a variety of ways, including tapping it with your fingers and experimenting with tilting it at different angles to change the sound.
HOW TO CHANGE IT UP:
-Experiment with impulse control and auditory processing with this idea:
Sit in a circle, everyone holding their ocean drums in their laps. Have one child start playing his drum (he chooses how to play it: tapping, shaking, or tilting side to side). The child sitting next to him imitates the way he’s playing, and then one at a time, each child joins in playing the drum the same way until the sound has made its way around the entire circle, everyone continuing to play together. When it comes back to the first person, that child changes the way he’s playing the drum (everyone else continues to play the previous way) and the process starts again, the children picking up the new sound one at a time and the sound of the circle gradually changing over to the new sound. Continue like this and give everyone a chance to be the leader! This is a great challenge for more complex auditory and motor skills, as the kids have to really focus in on the right sound and movement to play!
SKILL AREAS ADDRESSED: Visual motor integration, fine motor skills, grasp, motor control, coordination
World Music children’s performer, Daria, has spent the last two decades performing in the USA and around the world, creating music to inspire the world’s children. Along with national awards for her culturally diverse music, Daria’s website, World Music For Children received a 2009 Parent’s Choice Award and offers many great resources for teachers, parents and kids of all abilities. You can find Daria’s music, musical crafts and e-books on her TeachersPay Teachers site or at her Little Village Store.
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