Keeping the Kiddos Busy

A joke is going around in social media that with all the canned goods we are eating during the lockdown, we can play tumbang preso.   While that is a good idea, another thing you and your children can make with all those used tin cans is music.  Cans and many other throw-away household items can be recycled into homemade musical instruments. Here are some ideas. Most of the instruments you can make with recycled materials will be percussion instruments.  Your children will have fun playing them to accompany songs, or even to experiment with their own rhythms.  It may seem like childish play, but believe it or not, serious music has been made using recycled instruments.  Take this video for example: Soon, you may be able to enjoy a free concert in the comfort of your own home.

It is never too early (or too late) to learn music appreciation.  Music appreciation is one of the things you might want to learn as well as teach your kids during these times of community quarantine. There are countless resources online. For starters, there is The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra , which familiarizes listeners with the different instruments of the orchestra: Then there are two works that demonstrate the capacity of music to tell a story, paint a picture, and stir up imagination and feeling. One is Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf.  There are many recordings of it on Youtube. I am deliberately posting one with no accompanying animated  visuals to highlight how effective the music alone is in telling the story.   (Warning, though: some younger children might be frightened at the menacing theme representing the wolf.) Another is Saint-Saens' Carnival of the Animals , often combined with a reading of humorous verses by Odgen Nash. ...