My boys like to make noise and banging on drums is just one way that they do it. We have explored tempo using drums, played rainbow drums on the light table, and made bucket drums in the past. However, I wanted to somehow incorporate some literacy learning into a drum activity, especially since J is reading, spelling, and writing, and K is already reading quite a few words by sight too. I wanted to encourage them to learn some new words and practice spelling them.
So I took an approach like you would see in an episode of Word World. That show is brilliant. The way the make all the characters and objects out of the letters in the word is amazing. So I made a tin can drum for each letter of the word "drums." I also wrote "drums" on one can as a visual reminder of what word I wanted the boys to spell.
I simply used a permanent marker to draw the letters on the tin cans. I then grabbed some chopsticks and let the boys have at it!
K loved to bang the drums and say the letter names as he played, which is exactly what I had hoped for.
I also came up with a few different tunes to sing to them as they played the tin can drums. My personal favorite was the one I made up based on the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse tune...give or take. I kind of forget how the tune ends, but you get the idea anyway.
D - R - U -
M - AND S
D-R-U-M-S
THAT SPELLS DRUMS
THAT SPELLS DRUMS
YOU CAN BANG THEM, YOU CAN TAP THEM ALL DAY LONG
The boys then played the drums together, nicely at first. Then soon they were drumming wildly until all the cans fell over, but that's okay, because that means they had plenty of chances to practice spelling the word "drums" on their own.
J loved the spelling aspect. Here he is demonstrating how to assemble the cans.
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