This week at TLB Music, our Smock Rock art students are creating handmade maracas while listening to Cuban music!  These maracas are easy for little hands to make, help students practice fine motor skills and they sound great to play!

Student Materials:
masking or duct tape, in a few colors or patterns
2 plastic spoons, 1 plastic easter egg, about 1-2 tsp of rice

Teacher Materials: scissors

Teacher Prep: -place a small of of rice in a cup for each child
-cut strips of tape for students or help students cut

Make Your Own Maraca! Materials

If you have a real set of maracas, start by looking at them and asking students to identify the parts of the maraca (maraca head and handle!). What is making the noise? (little beads inside the maraca head!). To make our maraca head, we’re going to use a hollow, plastic egg. Do kids have any ideas what we could put inside to make sound? Let kids contribute ideas. Today, we’re going to use uncooked rice to fill our eggs. To create a handle, we’re going to sandwich the egg between 2 spoons and secure them together! Show finished model.

Let kids pick 2 spoons to use as their handles and one plastic easter egg. What colors did everyone choose? Everyone should have a little bit of rice in front of them. To begin, we’re going to put rice in our eggs.
Step 1 (fill plastic egg): Carefully add 1-2 tsp of rice to one side of your egg and close!

Now we need to seal our egg closed with a little bit of tape. Give each child a small piece.
Step 2 (secure egg with tape): Use tape to cover one side (opposite hinge) of your egg to secure.
Shake to test the sound!

Let’s add a little piece of tape to the inside of each spoon to help hold the egg in place. Show kids how to roll up a small piece of tape and place one at a time in each spoon.
Step 3 (tape rolls on spoons): Place a small roll of tape on bowl of each spoon

Now let’s add handles to our egg shaker!
Step 4 (place egg between spoons): Place the egg on one spoon, pushing firmly in place, then add the 2nd spoon on the opposite side so that their handles align and touch at the bottom.

Next, we have to secure our handles with tape! Help kids choose & cut tape in a variety of widths and lengths.
Step 5 (tape spoons around egg): Use tape to secure egg in place! Wrap around the center of the egg, beneath where the egg sits and at the bottom of the handles.

These activity sheets are perfect for beginning violinists! Use the guide to teach the basics of bowing (up vs. down bow) then practice on open strings with the sheet music.  Click on either image below to download the free, printable PDF:

Up Bow & Down Bow Guide

Up Bow & Down Bow Practice

Looking for more violin activity sheets?
Parts of the Violin & Bow: Guide and Activity Sheet
How to Draw a Violin

This activity sheet is perfect for learning the C major scale on the piano or xylophone!  At TLB Music, we teach young children how to play a scale on the xylophone using a simple song like “Doe a Deer”.  I highly recommend this toddler-friendly xylophone by Hohner.  It is fantastic because you can first use the colors as your guide (a color-coded song book is included) and as the children get older, they can begin to read the notes marked on the bars.  After mastering the scale on the xylophone, our students graduate to playing it on their own keyboards!

Click here to get the free activity sheet:  The C Major Scale on the Piano and Xylophone

Related piano activity sheets:
Notes C, D, and E on the Piano and Keyboard
Identifying C, D, and E
One Two Sheet Music for Piano (using notes C, D, E, F, and G)
C Major Scale Activity for Kids
Musical Spelling Activity Sheet (Level 1)
Musical Spelling Activity Sheet (Level 2)

Use this sheet for learning how to draw one of my favorite instruments to play- the violin!  Trace the dotted lines step by step then try drawing a violin on a blank sheet of paper.  It’s a challenge!  Click on the link below to download, save, and print the activity sheet:

Printable Activity for Kids-How to Draw a Violin

To learn the parts of the violin and bow, use this activity sheet!

This printable activity sheet is perfect for teaching children where the notes C, D, and E sit on the musical staff and where they are played on a piano keyboard or xylophone. Two easy songs to play with just C, D, and E: “Mary Had a Little Lamb” and “Hot Cross Buns”! Once your kids are ready to add more notes, try my “One Two” activity sheet for learning notes C through G.

Click here to download the sheet: Music Activity Sheet for Kids: Notes C, D, and E

Musical spelling activities are the perfect way to make practicing note identification fun. This sheet is more challenging than my first musical spelling activity sheet so make sure to complete that one before trying Level 2!

Click here to enlarge, save, and print image!

Warm up with this C Major Scale Activity for Kids.  For beginners, print the scale as a guide.

I used to love the musical spelling activities my piano teacher Mrs. Weedon would assign me so I decided to start making some for The Bird Feed.  Here is the first!

For beginners, warm up with this C Major Scale Activity for Kids.

 Ready for more of a challenge? Try Musical Spelling-Level 2!

How to say “Camille Saint-Saëns”:
Here’s a helpful page with three audio bites of the composers name: http://www.forvo.com/word/camille_saint-saëns/

The activity sheets (click here to enlarge as PDF and print):

Send a picture or scan of your music-inspired art to thebirdfeednyc@gmail.com to be featured in a Bird Feed children’s art gallery.

(click here to enlarge photo and print)

We use this sheet in our music classes at TLB Music when we teach conducting patterns to our students.   It’s a fun way to introduce time signature to children by attaching a physical motion to each signature, making it easy to remember the rhythms.  You can use anything you’d like as your conducting batons when practicing with your kids!  In class, we use mallets turned backwards before graduating to the big baton. Pencils, straws, or your finger will work just as well!

Begin by explaining what a conductor does: A conductor leads and directs an orchestra or musical group using hand movements and a baton.  They help set the tempo, shape the sound and unify the group!  To start the exercise, count out loud to each signature, stressing the downbeat (the first note of each measure) to get the feel of counting in 2, 3, and 4.  For example, when counting aloud to your 3/4 time signature, you might notice that 1 2 3, 1 2 3, 1 2 3 sounds like a waltz.  That’s because waltzes are written in 3/4 time!  Before conducting in the air, count aloud and use your finger to trace each conducting pattern on the sheet.  Next- time to conduct! Here are a couple songs for each signature:

2/4 : “The Clock” Symphony (Haydn) and Bacchanalle from Samson and Delilah (Saint-Saens)
3/4 : Waltz in A Flat (Brahms) and La Donna e Mobile from Rigoletto (Verdi)
4/4 : Eine Kleine Nachtmusik (Mozart) and Spring from The Four Seasons (Vivaldi)

I wrote this little song to use in our children’s music classes at TLB Music. With younger kids, we practice playing in 4/4 time, tapping drums on the first two beats of each measure, then resting for the 3rd and 4th. With older children, we play the melody on xylophones and keyboards. Click on the image for a downloadable PDF of the sheet!

We use these time signature activity sheets in our children’s music classes at TLB Music!
Click on the image to enlarge and print.

Our students at TLB Music love playing the violin. They start plucking and bowing on 1/8 size violins as early as age two or three in class! These printable sheets are perfect for learning the parts of the violin. Click through for the activity sheets!

Parts of the Violin and Bow PDF
Parts of the Violin (blank) PDF

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These are some of the instruments we play in our children’s music classes at TLB Music in NYC.
The printable cards below are perfect for learning the names of the instruments and their families!

Click on pictures to enlarge.

The String Family:  We pluck, pick, strum, and bow on our string instruments.  For our Guitars and Banjo, we can use a pick or our fingertips.  For our Violin, Viola, Cello, and Double Bass, we use a bow and can play pizzicato (plucking the string) with our fingers.

The Percussion Family: We make sounds on our percussion instruments by striking them or shaking them! We use mallets to tap on our Snare Drum, Marimba, Triangle, and Xylophone and we use our bare hands to tap the Djembe and Tambourine.

The Woodwind Family: To make a sound on a woodwind instrument we blow through a mouthpiece or reed. The Saxophone and Clarinets use a mouthpiece with a single reed  (a flat thin piece of material) that vibrates and produce the sound! The Bassoon and Oboe use double reeds, which are made of two reeds attached together at the base.  Flutes are the exception to the reed rule and are played by blowing across an opening at the end of the flute.

The Brass Family: To play a brass instrument, you need to blow and vibrate your lips through a metal mouthpiece. To change the pitch on the Trombone, we move the slide in and out. On the Trumpet and French Horn, we use a combination of fingerings and embouchure (lip tension) to alter the pitch!

We also use a set (pictured below) of sturdy individual instrument posters by Hal Leonard at our music studio. Each 9″ x 12″ card features a different instrument of the orchestra and includes history of the instrument, fun facts, and pieces of music that showcase it! These are perfect for all ages and are a must-have item for music educators.  This company also makes composer posters! Click here to view on Amazon