Easy Musical Instruments for Kids to Make

Making your own musical instruments is a lot of fun and something that some kids will do on their own without prompting. But these ideas for musical instruments that kids can make will inspire you and them to make music with things you probably already have around the house.

This spinning hand drum, for instance, is made with a cardboard tube and some flat cardboard, as well as basic crafting supplies. Get the instructions from Marcie in Mommyland. (I’ve done a similar drum with paper plates.) Or make a paper plate tambourine that’s an art project and musical instrument in one like this one from Kids Craft Room.

Take the shoebox guitar up a notch with these adorable jar lid banjos from The Craft Train. Kids will have as much fun embellishing them as they will playing them.

How about a thumb piano? This one from Thrifty Fun uses bobby pins and a block of wood, or you can make something similar with wooden sticks and a paper plate, as shown at Kodaly and Orff Music Teachers Blog.

Clapping sticks made from paint stirrers are also a fun project both to decorate and to play. Try painting the base color yourself and letting kids decorate with paint or paint pens to make the project go a little faster. Get all the details from Laughing Kids Learn.

How about a couple of xylophones? This idea of using wrenches is really fun, and it doesn’t harm the wrenches so you can still use them as tools when the kids are done playing. Get the instructions from De tout et de rien (instructions are in English and French).

Or try the old different levels of water in glasses experiment to make some pretty music. Still Playing School makes this one even more fun by adding food coloring to the water and taking the play to the light table. So pretty!

Using Music as Therapy In a world where life can get pretty overwhelming, we’re all on the lookout for ways to heal, find solace, and discover our true selves. And you know what? There’s something truly extraordinary that has been rocking our world for ages, and it goes by the name of music. Yep, you heard that right! Music has this incredible power to lift us up, inspire us, and even heal our souls. That’s why more and more therapists and healers are embracing music therapy as a way to tap into the transformative potential of melodies and beats.

Hand Held Music Maker

Several countries have a day set aside to honor and recognize their inventors, but Nov. 9 is a special one that’s known as Tag der Erfinder in German. It’s celebrated in Germany, Austria and Switzerland and it falls on Nov. 9 because that’s the birthday of Hedy Lamarr.

Hedy Lamarr is widely known as an actress but there’s a lot more to her story. You can get a little of it geared to little kids in the Little People, Big Dreams book Hedy Lamarr (32 pages, hardcover, published 2023 by Frances Lincoln Childrens Books, suggested retail price $15.99).

The book explores her birth in Austria and how she spent time when she was young coming up with inventions. She became an actress, married an arms dealer, made her escape to America and became an actress again.

But she also helped develop a frequency-hopping signal device for airplanes that was used by the Americans and their allies during World War II. That technology became the basis for wireless technology such as wifi and GPS.

While Inventor’s Day is a great time to learn about Hedy Lamarr, you can take this opportunity to check out books and do little studies on lots of different inventors. If there’s an inventor or an invention your child is particularly interested in, that’s a great place to start. It’s fun to think about all the things we use every day that didn’t always exist; someone had to invent them!

For a start here at Craft Gossip you can learn more about Garrett Morgan, who invented traffic lights; Maria Oroso, who developed a clay oven that could cook food without electricity; and more female inventors and scientists.

And for more general inventors’ fun, check out this inventors word search from Fun Findery (and another from Let’s Do Puzzles) or take a quiz on inventors and their inventions from Flanders Family Home Life.

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