Making Shakers With Wooden Dowels & Bottle Caps

Series Summary

Your child is probably fascinated with music, musical instruments, and dance – most children are! There are many ways for your kids from infancy to prepubescence to enjoy the thrills of participating in and enjoying music in all its forms, whether that be through listening to headphones, dancing and singing, or playing instruments themselves. Naturally, a child's involvement with music is a huge bolster to their self-worth, their confidence and (last but not least) their creative spirit. Make the most out of their innate drive to create and enjoy the arts by combining two artistic outlets together for one fun project: gather regular and available household items and craft them into homemade musical instruments for your kids and their play friends to enjoy alongside their other musical and artistic projects.

In this free video clip series, our expert will show you ways to take numerous household items that you probably have in your kitchen at this very moment and utilize them with a little creativity to form a virtual orchestra for your kids. Teach them how to make their own trumpets from cardboard rolls, shakers and maracas with dried beans and paper bags, and kazoos from empty toilet paper rolls! They will delight in seeing these typically benign household items (and some trash, too!) become fun playthings they can enjoy making themselves as well as playing with later. Inexpensive art projects for children combined with musical exploration and creativity made simple with these free videos!

Video Transcript

" Hello I'm Annie Brunson on behalf of Expert Village. We are making musical instruments out of everyday household items. Today you need some bottle caps, you would need some dowel, and a hammer, and of course some nails. You are going to take a medium length nail and you are going to put two bottle caps together. You are going to be hammering them on to the dowel. First of all I'm going to get the bottle cap started. So once you have hammer holes into your caps you take a slightly smaller nail and make sure that it goes through the hole quiet well but, it doesn't actually go all the way through. Now we are going to put the bottle caps onto the dowel. Make sure that the tops are together. Put a nail through and now we are going to hammer that to the dowel. Then you are going to repeat that with two other nails and now we have a nice little shaker. "