Music

I love music,  it makes a HUGE difference in my mood.  When I'm running, the time on the treadmill goes faster when I have some tunes to help push me through.  When I'm cleaning, I actually clean faster and enjoy myself if I have some good music on.  When I'm driving in the car....My 2 year old stays pretty happy when I sing some of his favorites with him. We want our children to enjoy music too.

Making Music in the Kitchen!

 Who knew you could make music with so many different things? We had a ton of fun discovering ways to make our own music with common kitchen items.

We used hot coco and nut cans to make drums. My 2 year old loved this! It was fun for him to try out all of the different spoons, and utensils. Depending on the material of the utensil you hear different sounds.

Have you seen Miss Congeniality.? Remember when Gracie (Sandra Bullock) plays the water glasses for her talent in the pageant? That’s what inspired this activity. We filled up some of our glasses with water and made some music…well more like noise! ; )

and then……this little guy decided he was thirsty! ; )

Another thing we did was got some containers and filled them with different objects….rice, beans, cheerios and corn nuts! It was fun shaking these containers and listening to the different noises.

We also played with the music toys that we already have. This drum is from leap frog...as you hit the top, the alphabet lights up and it moves to a new letter with each hit!

A few other things that we did that I don't have pictures of:

-we turned on some tunes and danced our hearts out in the kitchen. I had no idea this little guy loved dancing so much and I have NO CLUE where he gets some of his moves. : ) (There is a reason I don't have pictures)

- we sang some of our favorite songs! The ABC's, twinkle twinkle little star, The aunts go marching on, The duck song, the itsy bitsy spider and I Love You (a song my mom wrote and sang to me growing up).

Homemade Musical Instruments

We made some fun musical instruments. We kept things pretty simple and have really enjoyed these homemade instruments!

We made a guitar with a shoe box and rubber bands.

We made a tambourine by tapping 2 paper plates together with popcorn kernels in the center. (It was a lot like a rattle and my little girl loved it!) You could also attach bells to the outside of the plate for a different sound.

We made a rainstick!

My little guy wanted a big one so we used the center from wrapping paper and stuck tons of toothpicks through it. (You could also use a paper towel center or toilet paper center)

This looked more like a weapon to me then a musical instrument :) We ended up cutting the toothpicks down and wrapping the tub with tape.

This is what the inside looked like.

We then filled it with popcorn kernels and tapped the edges closed.

We also had fun with drums! We just used a bunch of empty containers I had saved.

We also had lots of fun just singing songs and finding things around the house that made noise. My little boy loved making the sound of horse hoofs by clapping two bowels together...my little girl loved simply clapping! Our favorite was turning the radio on and dancing...both my little guy and girl loved spinning and I loved watching their fun moves!

Little Einsteins

Have you ever seen any of the little einstein's movies? My little boy got the movie pictured below for Christmas and LOVES it! It is a cute show with 3 different episodes. Little einstein's visit a famous place in each of there episodes, talk about music and encourage watchers to get involved by doing simple things like clapping their hands. Anyway, I came into the room to find my little boy re-enacting an episode.

He had his blocks stacked (for the leaning tower of Pisa), his cowboy hat on and his little red train (for the wild wild west episode), and his plane (for rocket) and hit helicopter (for Big Jet). I thought it was so cute to see him doing this all on his own...I made him stop for a picture!

The other day we went on a walk around the block and he started walking really slow and looks up/ahead at me and says "Mom, we need to go adagio." I started laughing so hard I almost started to cry. As I was laughing he says "Okay, mom...now allegro!" If you haven't seen these episodes you would think I have a pretty weird kid but if you have it makes perfect sense. In every episode they fly in a rocket and refer to fast as Allegro, and slow as Adagio...they are music terms...they also play music from famous composers.

We have had a lot of fun with this movie, it's become a normal thing for my little guy to tell me to go Allegro when we are driving and to pretend like he has found different things to fulfill his pretend missions.