Buckets of Fun

Today was a lovely day... to go outside and make some noise.
We have some buckets laying around, which many of you do as well.... So, we continued in our drum theme this week and did some simple tasks with the buckets.

All you need for this is a kid, a bucket, and a few sticks of some sort. We do have drum sticks around the house, but they have been moved somewhere by some toddler who will remain nameless... so we used markers today.

You'll need a bucket-drum for each kiddo....

We gave one to the baby, but he had other plans...

My goals today were to do simple imitation patterns and descriptive sounds.

So, after a bit of 'free drumming,'  mom started by playing a simple rhythm      (ta, ti-ti. Or, Long, quick-quick, etc. etc....)
and they had to imitate. K (4) did fine, J (2) banged back roughly the same thing every time.  :-)

We went around and each tried to "imitate" the sounds made by the one who's turn it was.
J often did sound effects with his demonstrations. Very amusing.

Whereas your student may desire to just bang aimlessly, to develop rhythm and musicianship, do your best to get them thinking about imitation, patterns, loud/soft, fast/slow, etc...

****Remember, your role is demonstration! Show them how it is done correctly and help them with ideas. They want to succeed in these little things and they need you to help them to understand and to inspire them.

Next, we described sounds. For example,

"How would it sound if we were tiptoeing?"  or "What would it sound like if we were marching?" 

Speed: 

"What if we were running away from a big monster?"  or  "What if we were walking very, very slow?" 

"What if we were walking first, then started to race?" 

Then... what different ways can you make noise on the drum?

Here's K dropping his "sticks" rather than striking. 

So simple, so much potential.... so fun! Enjoy!