Clay Pots: Outdoor Discovery for Musical Monday

Do you have any old clay pots around?  Use them to make a fun, outdoor musical instrument!

Supplies:

Office rings or paper clips

Yarn or twine

Various sizes of clay pots
Spoons, sticks, etc.

1)  Tie a metal office ring with a 1.5-2 foot piece of yarn or twine (if you're going to leave these up for a while, I would recommend twine or rope).  Thread it through the hole in the bottom of a clay pot.  The pot will be upside down and the ring will be inside it.  

If you don't have office rings, you can manipulate a paper clip to form a circle.  I used paper clips on two of mine.  We actually think those two make the best sounds when struck.  Hmm...

2)  Tie the pots to a rod of some sort.  We used the swing set bar!  You can also do this inside using a pocket chart stand, hanging stand, or something like that.  Explore the sounds by using various objects to hit the pots (spoons, pens, sticks, etc.).

Make A Simple Shaker!

(Photo credit: Mindy Upham Photography)

I'm privileged to watch this precious little one on Thursdays!  This is my six-month-old niece, and as you can imagine, I love snuggling her!  I also love playing with her.  You'll probably be seeing a few more baby activities around here!!

Last week when she visited, we made a simple little shaker.  My girls loved it, too!

Supplies:

Medicine bottle (I prefer to use a new one -- ask your pharmacist!)

Rice or beans

1)  Fill the bottle with a spoonful of rice or beans.  Close.  Shake!

How easy is that?!!  You can use any container, I just prefer the medicine bottle so I don't have to worry as much about the little ones getting it opened (supervision is still highly recommended)!

Easter Egg Activities

One simple activity you can do with Easter Eggs is to make a sound matching game.

1)  Fill pairs of eggs with items to make different sounds (beans, sugar, jingle bells, screws, peanuts, pom-poms, etc.).  Eight to ten eggs seems to work well.

2)  Place in a basket and allow your child to shake each egg.  See if she can make some matches!!  Please make sure you supervise so no little pieces are swallowed!

I had my eggs filled with peanuts, gum-drops, a small piece of a pretzel, and pom-poms -- so we had a little snack afterwards (excluding pom-poms, of course!).