Music Activities: Co-op Edition - Tuesday April 23, 2013

The Plan:

Kale Cookies -
seriously, they're made with pureed kale

I am hosting a big kid co-op in the afternoon, so the morning will be spent cleaning the house, putting dinner in the crockpot, and making our cookies for snack.  L will probably help me with the cookies and otherwise have free play.


Here's the cookie recipe in case you want to get some leafy greens into your kids - http://versatile-vegan.com/2013/03/17/dont-call-these-spinach-cookies-although-thats-exactly-what-they-are/

1.) Create an instrument with legos.
2.) Dance Party
3.) Rhythm Band
4.) Percussion Water Play - bowls and spoons in water table
Cool site that talks about Musical Water Play - http://childsplaymusic.com.au/2012/01/17/water-play-music-play-children-a-natural-combination/

How it went:

1.) For this week's co-op, I had two five year olds and my three year old.  Both older boys are big fans of lego, so I thought that the make-an-instrument-out-of-legos activity would be a big hit.  First, Z and RJ built a drum and cymbal, respectively, when L requested help in building a guitar.  Then RJ took the activity one step further (delighting me!) by asking if he could build a made up instrument.  Perhaps I wasn't clear when I told them they could build any kind of instrument they wanted in the beginning, but in any case, I was thrilled that he was using his imagination.

This is his unnamed instrument:



As per his explanation, this instrument has a string made of different materials where one part of the string makes high pitches and one part makes lower ones. The "string" is the jagged blue piece.  The string also makes the grey pronged lever at the end vibrate, making the instrument make noise both from the strings vibration and the vibration of the end piece.  RJ said that it makes those two sounds at once, making his instrument different.  I thought it was pretty cool.  It is played with another lego piece that sort of resembles a two pronged pick.

2.) Dance party was a success with RJ and L, but Z wasn't into it and instead wanted to play with the workbench and then the car ramp.  I thought he would like it since he regularly has "dance party" at his house and I specifically tried to add the pop/electronic/dance sounding music that he would like to my "Kid's Dance Party" playlist on my iPod (rather than my usual classic rock/alternative/pop ballad/broadway/most of what they cover on glee tastes).  But maybe next time he'll be in the mood to dance.

3.) No one wanted to play Rhythm Band, so we skipped it.

4.) When they wanted to go outside and get their swim suits on to play with the water (it was a glorious warm spring day, near 80 degrees here in Northern California), I brought out the various bowls, spoons, plastic mallets, etc. for them to play with.  I also brought out our water xylophone and water whistle to play with (they normally live in the bathtub, but I might keep them for the water table now that it's warm out and the kids have mostly switched to taking quick showers anyway.  They'll get a lot more use that way).  The neatest sounding things were the stainless steel mixing bowls that made a wavering "boiiing" kind of noise when they were hit on the bottom when filled with water that you gently shook around (I should have recorded it - maybe next time).  RJ in particular perfected the movements necessary to make that noise.  Once they explored all the different sounds and how the pitch changed with the addition of more or less water, it mostly devolved into throwing water at each other, but that is to be expected on a warm, sunny day!