Thursday, April 6, 2017

Musical Maracas

Sensory Fun with the Letter M


     Every other week I take my kids to the library and I seek out books for story time that use several words beginning with our letter of the week. I ask the kids to listen carefully for all the words in the story that start with the letter of the week. When they hear the letter sound or a certain word I tell them to listen for, they are to act silly or make noises. The toddlers love this activity. To give us a new letter sound reaction, I found these incredibly easy DIY Maracas.

     This week, while I read my story books featuring the letter "Mm" the kids can shake their maracas and move around with excitement. It can be hard to calm the kids back down enough to continue reading the story, but with my schedule during the week, we almost never have to rush through. It's nice most days. However, if I did need the kids stop shaking I would limit them to giving their maracas only a few shakes and stop. 

Here is the supplies list:

Plastic Easter Eggs
Plastic Spoons
Colorful ducktape
Scissors
BB's (you could also use dry uncooked rice, beans, or seeds)




     The first step is to open the Plastic Easter Egg and fill it with your BBs. I had my tots do this step because at age 3 1/2, popping open an Easter Egg is easy. 





     We didn't completely fill the egg, we left about half of the egg empty so the BBs could move easily inside and they would be noisier, of course. Finally, took the ducktape and cut it into thinner strips because the thinner strips could wrap easily around the egg. I took the two plastic spoons and placed them together with the scoop opening sides facing one another. Then I wrapped the bottom of the spoons so they would stay together.

    Meanwhile, I handed my toddler a strip of tape and had her wrap the egg so it wouldn't come apart for the next step:




     We placed the tape egg between the two spoons. Then we started wrapping again with more tape.

    My littles were  also able to wrap the tape around the spoons to decorate the handle to their maracas.




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