Hello blog readers! It’s Tuesday, and time for another fun-filled musical activity. For this activity, you will need a group of four or more children preferably school-aged. We will be creating a children’s drum circle, which is the perfect musical activity for when play dates are over at your house. It is structured creativity in free form.
You may not have 4 or more drums lying around your house, so here are a few ideas of household items your children’s friend can drum on.
A trash can
A coffee can
An upside down bowl
A traditional hand drum
This one can be purchased through Amazon.com. Click HERE to view it.
The Activity
Sit the children in a circle with their drums. Chances are they are not used to keeping beats and rhythms on drums, so demonstrate a beat that one child will maintain and keep up through this pattern of drumming. Once they have the hang of it, ask the child sitting next to them if they can think up a pattern on their drum that will compliment the beat the first child is playing. If they can not think up something on their own, help them come up with a pattern. Add each child and their drum beat into the circle one at a time. Once each child is playing, instruct the children to listen to the great patterns of beats they have created.
Ask the children to stop drumming. Repeat the activity, only this time, tell them you will help less. Ask for a child to come up with a different pattern on their own. Point to each child as you want them to contribute with a beat that adds on to the patterns being played. Only help them if you absolutely have to.
Once each child is playing, ask them to play their drums softly and point to one child to play loudly and change the rhythm to a new pattern. Slowly, each child should change their beats, too, to match up with the new patterns. Tell the children to see how long they can go changing patterns without stopping. There you have it….this is a drum circle!
I hope you all have enjoyed this week’s Top 10 Tuesday music activity. For a complete list of the Top 10 Tuesday musical instruments under $40 that will help to promote music education in the home, click HERE. For an archive of all previous Top 10 Tuesday music activities, click HERE. Please don’t forget to check back every Tuesday for some more musical fun, and until next week, play on!
