Here’s a quick, easy, and inexpensive way (music to a teacher’s ears, right?) to create a great tool for incorporating music and auditory discernment. Whoa, back up the truck, what was that? “Auditory discernment” is the ability to hear the differences and similarities between two sounds. It can be as simple as hearing the difference between a bell ringing and a horn honking, but it’s also the groundwork for hearing the difference between the sounds in words, like the short e sound and the short i sound. Phonemic awareness is a critical reading skill, and it is completely auditory. So building auditory skills actually paves the way for reading skills. OK, so back to the project at hand!
Make Those Shaky Eggs
Shaky eggs have to be one of the simplest instruments for children to play. Even toddlers participate with ease when egg shakers are involved! In fact, as soon as infants can grasp with their hands, they can play shaky eggs! I’ve seen shaky eggs for sale for as much as $5 for a set of 2! I’m here to tell you that you can make a class set for about that much! And the process is so simple, you could even let the kiddos each make their own!
This time of year is the right time to do this project, because with Easter around the corner, you can find these plastic eggs for $1 a package! All you need to do is place a little bit of dry rice or popcorn kernels in each egg and seal the egg with electrical tape. (The electrical tape works best because it bends around the egg rather than puckering like many of the other tapes do.) Once your egg is filled and sealed, feel free to decorate it with stickers or use permanent markers to draw designs or write names. Then all that’s left is to SHAKE!