Recycled Instrument Project

The time between Spring Break and the end of the year tends to make kids antsy, and a solid month of standardized testing certainly doesn’t help. I save my favorite projects for this time of year, so kids have enough motivation to not completely lose their minds when April and May come around.

One of my all-time favorite projects is creating instruments. Since 5^th grade is supposed to study world instruments, we use those as a model for creating our own.

First, we watch and listen to world instruments, discuss how they are made, and brainstorm how we could make our own. I break it down by instrument family. Here is a list of the instruments we studied this year:

• Woodwind: Shakahachi (Japan), pan flute (Native American), bagpipe (Scotland), arghul (Egypt) and ghaita (Middle-Eastern)
• Brass: Tibetan Long Horn (Tibet)
• String: Koto and Shamisen (Japan), kora (African), inanga (Rwanda), Berimbau (Brazil)
• Percussion: Caxixi (Brazil), Taiko (Japan), Bodhran (Ireland), Talking Drum (West Africa), Djembe (West Africa), Shekere (West Africa), Mbira (West Africa)

We watched several videos on YouTube so we could hear what the instruments sounded like. You can watch the playlist here.

3^rd grade was studying instruments of the orchestra, so we did this exact project but focused on those instruments instead.

Once we had explored how the instruments were made and what they sounded like, we started to create our own. We started with a plan. Students took a plain piece of paper, folded it into four equal rectangles, and followed this format:

• 1.)    I will make a ________. It is in the _________ family.
• 2.)    To make a ______, I will need _________.
• 3.)    Explain each step you will take to create your instrument.
• 4.)    My _____ will look like: (Draw your instrument.)

 

Student examples of the plan.

This allows students to really consider what they will need and how they will make their instrument. I tried this project last year without the plan, and students got so distracted by all the cool stuff that they forgot to use any knowledge they had of how instruments are made. The actual construction of the instruments went much smoother this year, because students had created an exact plan before they could be distracted by giant Cheese Puff containers.

My example instrument: a shamisen made from cardboard, tape, and fishing line.

I sent a mass e-mail to the staff at my school asking for recyclables a few weeks before we created our instruments. Man, did they deliver! I ended up with 5 huge bags of recyclables, more than enough for all the classes.

One of the student instruments, modeled after a ghaita.

I went through the recyclables and sorted them into equal piles for each class. That way, the last class wasn’t left with just the stuff nobody else wanted. When kids came in for class that day, their eyes got huge! It was so fun to watch.

Man did my room get messy! The kids did a great job of cleaning up when they were done, though.

On the day we made instruments, I sent kids to the carpet with all the recycles in small groups and allowed them plenty of time to work on their instruments. We listened to classical pieces we had covered in the background, and the rule was students couldn’t be louder than the music. When students were done, they got to go back to the risers and take an instrument selfie. (Silly, and I’m not sure it was even a selfie since I took the picture, but they were SO INTO IT!)

One instrument that made me laugh out loud was the Minion Caxixi. It was named Kevin.

This project is engaging with a lot of self-direction and creativity. It’s great for any time of the year, but I really love it at the end of the year. This is quickly becoming a tradition, the kids love it, and it’s just as enjoyable for me.

Go forth and make instruments! I hope you have fun!