Instruments in Making

We were about to start our summer vacations. We gave our final exams and were so relieved to see the holidays coming up. Everyone needed that break so badly. Just some time to relax and enjoy for a while. That’s when our professor approached us and said that a preschool needed 4 interns for a summer camp. We were thrilled to try out something new and spend the vacation in an interesting way. We immediately agreed.

Over there we were teaching children different musical instruments, songs, painting activities, riddles, crosswords, games, stories and what not, of course under the teachers’ guidance.

One fine day the principal of that preschool came up to us and said that we had to make a musical instrument from anything and everything available in the preschool. Now this had us scratching our heads for a day or two. We tried to make this as realistic as possible. So, we started with a dholki (an Indian percussion instrument). We took 2 small dustbins and joined them with cello tape, with their faces inwards. Then we mixed water and fevicol, dipped newspaper pieces in it and stuck it on the dustbins, to cover the actual dustbins and make them look like one object. After the newspaper pieces dried, we coloured the whole thing with brown paint. When the paint dried we attached sticks and threads to it as you can see in the picture. We also painted black circles at both the ends, from where the instrument is played. All the teachers loved what we made out of dustbins, and a cherry on the top, the recreated dholki actually sounded like a real dholki when played, as it was hollow from the inside. We were very happy with what we came up with.

Later on we also made some small instruments with the children. we made 2 kinds of maracas with plastic bottles and with small use and throw plastic bowls. We used small stones, beads and ghungroos in it for the beautiful sound that comes from it. And then we made tambourines with paper plates. the children really enjoyed making xylophones with colourful paper. We used our creativity at its best. We enjoyed making all these instruments a lot. We learned so much during this summer camp and it helped us in our later teaching days as well.

See ya

- Mrunmayi Kanitkar