Creative Ways to Use Instruments Every Day!

Ask any student what their favorite lesson in your class is and I bet you that 90% of them will tell you that they love any time they get to use the instruments!   Instruments are fun and exciting and make any lesson sparkle!  Sadly, I think that many of us leave our classroom instruments in their plastic tubs, cabinets, or closets far too much of the time.  Here are a few ideas about how to pull out and use any instruments you might have in fun and exciting ways!

Rhythm Echo/Reading – The Next Level
I’m sure that many of you spend time teaching rhythm patterns by having students echo your example or read notation along with flashcards.  It’s great practice for kids to echo patterns and helps them work on listening even as it improves coordination, steady beat, and rhythmic understanding.  It so easy to add in body percussion in the form of a clap, pat, snap, or stomp.  I love saying something like “I’m going to give you a rhythm and you need to take my words and turn them into claps.”  Students hear “ti-ti, ta, ti-ti, ta” and then they pat the rhythm they hear. You can have them turn your words into pats, claps, snaps, or anything else you want.  Kiddos can click their tongue, pat their tummy, nod their head, blink their eyes, and so much more.  You can easily do this with rhythm cards as well.  Ask students to read the cards and along with saying the words out loud, ask them to clap the rhythm at the same time.

The next step is to take your words and put them onto an instrument.  Give your students rhythm sticks and then have then click the patterns that you speak to them.  Start with easy patterns and increase the difficulty slowly as they speak and click along.  To take this even further, ask them to find a new way to use the instrument.  Maybe they play on the floor, maybe they click the ends of the rhythm stick together, maybe they play behind their back… the possibilities are endless!  In the next lesson you can spend 5 minutes doing the exact same thing with tambourines, drums, wood blocks, etc.

Instrument Circles – Rhythm Practice
This activity is really fun to do with any grade to give them exposure to more of the instruments in your classroom.  The goal is to let students play many different instruments in one class at the same time that they work on rhythms.  Basically, I use the procedure I spoke of above asking students to take my words and turn them into claps/pats/etc.  I take hula hoops and set them out on the floor of my classroom.  I put 5 or 6 of the same instrument in each hula hoop (which is great if I have a small number of a certain instrument but not a class set).  Then I split up the class into 4 groups and have one group assigned to each hula hoop.  The kids take the instrument they find in the hoop and copy my rhythm pattern using that instrument.  After a few minutes, I’ll ask student groups to switch to a new hoop so that they can try out a new instrument.  

Set up ideas:  Put 4-5 instrument in each hula hoop.  Hoop 1: 5 sets of claves, Hoop 2: 5 sets of maracas, Hoop 3:  5 cowbells with soft mallets, Hoop 4:  5 guiros,  Hoop 5: 5 pairs of finger cymbals.  Spend a few minutes copying/reading at each station.  You could even say “Only the Claves and Maracas this time!” to mix things up a bit.  This is really fun when you get to 16th notes with students.  I love letting them figure out which instrument are good to play 16th notes and which instruments make it hard to play 16th notes.  

Another set up idea:  Put several instruments from a non-pitched category in a hoop.  That way you have a hoop of woods, metals, shakers, scrapers, and membranes.  The woods hoop could have two each of wood blocks, claves, tone blocks, and castanets.

Birthday Gong
The “Birthday Gong” is something I added this year and it has been a huge hit in my classroom.  If it’s a student’s birthday on a music class day (or if they’ll have their birthday over the weekend) I let them play the big golden gong that usually just sits on the edge of the room.  Kids LOVE this special treat and look forward to having their birthday on music class day.  I’m pleased as well because we have this huge and beautiful gong that normally just sits unplayed.  I use the gong during songs and games whenever possible, but it’s not always easy to add into every day lessons.  I mean, how do you incorporate a gong into an "Old McDonald" lesson? Turning it into the “birthday gong” gives the gong a reason to be rung once every day or so.

As this is my first year doing this, I haven’t had to deal with all those kids whose birthday is during the summer and I’m still trying to figure out how I want to handle that.  The few students who had birthdays over winter break rang the gong on the week before break or the week after depending on if/when they remembered.  If you have an easy solution about how to incorporate kids who have birthdays in the summer, leave your idea in the comments so that anyone reading this post can use your idea!

Instrument of the Week
In the past I’ve tried out an "instrument of the week" where I take two minutes at the end of class one day a week to explain a new/different instruments to the kids. One time the “instrument of the week” might be the hand drum and you can show off the different sizes, how they fit together, and how each size sounds different. One week you might explain castanets and can demonstrate how to play the instrument.  I love this type of activity because it lets you cycle through all those instruments that aren’t played very often.  It also shows kids how to play and gives them a sample of the sounds the instrument makes.  Great for exposure to new timbres and perfect if you have a teacher who always runs a minute or two late in picking up their class.  

It’s really fun to have an “Instrument of the Week” activity like this when you have odd or unique instruments like the vibraslap or flex-o-tone.  Kids LOVE to hear these fun instruments and then get really excited about the next time you give them a free choice or do an activity like Instrument Circles (mentioned above).  

Add a “B Section” to any song
Take any song that you’re currently learning in class and add a “B section” that’s comprised of rhythm patterns/ostinato patterns.  You can teach students really basic rhythmic patterns, even one or two measures worth of rhythm.  Have them learn the rhythm patterns as body percussion by clapping and patting the rhythm.  When you’re ready, you can transfer the rhythm to an instrument.  If you want to highlight a certain instrument, then pull it out and let students play their new rhythm on that instrument. For example, you might have a class set of jingle bells that only get played around the winter holidays.  Pull out those bells and ring them on the B section of the song.  

Be careful giving students a free and open choice with something like this or you will have ALL of your instruments out at once.  Giving them that open-ended choice might also mean that kids will stand around trying out EVERY single instrument you have until the class is over or your ears start to bleed.  If you want some free student choice, it might be smart to allow students to pull any instrument they want from the Woods category or Shakers category.  That limits what students can use and also reinforces their knowledge of the divisions in the non-pitched percussion.

Teacher Accompaniments – Use Anything!
This idea is directed at you, oh brave music teacher.  Stretch yourself and consider accompanying students on something new.  Maybe this means that as students sing you sit down at the piano and “boom-chuck” out an accompaniment.  If you have stringed instruments you might play the ukulele or guitar along with a student song/game.  You could even pull out the recorder to teach the melody of a song or to play along with students in a singing game.  

Don’t get stuck doing what you always do just because it's most comfortable.  In my first years of teaching I learned that some students learned better if I didn’t sing along or if I played a melody on the piano to help them match pitch. I also found out that some students seemed to “get it” quicker if I didn’t demonstrate a song’s melody and played an accompaniment on the Bass Xylophone or guitar instead.  Students all learn differently, so you should consider demonstrating/accompanying differently as well.  

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If you like these ideas, PIN THEM for later.  Do you have any other ideas for using instrument or suggestions for expanding on the ideas above?  Feel free to share them in the comments.

Sing! Teach! Love!