Handmade Instruments for Preschoolers | Instruments You Can Make Together with Your Child
When children make their own instruments to play rhythm games or perform to music, it fosters their sense of rhythm and pitch, as well as their imagination and expressive abilities, bringing very positive effects to their development.
So this time, we’re introducing handmade instrument ideas you can use in daycare, kindergarten, or at home.
From simple projects you can make with recycled materials or items from the dollar store to more advanced creations based on the principles of real instruments, we’ve gathered a wide range of DIY instrument ideas!
Find projects that match your child’s age and developmental stage, and try making them together.
We hope you’ll enjoy a fun time exploring the unique sounds that these handmade instruments can produce!
- [Childcare] Enjoy handmade tambourines with the children
- Handmade instruments with plastic bottles: try making flutes, percussion, and traditional ethnic instruments.
- [Childcare] Easy to make! Handmade toys that delight 0-year-olds
- Craft activity ideas that parents and children can enjoy together during a preschool observation day
- Paper cup crafts that elementary school kids will love! A collection of fun project ideas
- [Nursery/Kindergarten] Crafts you can play with after making them
- Craft ideas using plastic bottle caps [for boys]
- Make it with everyday materials! A collection of DIY toy ideas recommended for 1-year-olds
- Recommended songs for eurhythmics. Let's enjoy music using our bodies!
- Recommended for 5-year-olds! Simple DIY toy ideas
- By Age: Enjoy Music with Instrument Play! Plus DIY Instrument Ideas
- [Childcare] Recommended for toddlers! Toy ideas you can make and play with
- [Childcare] Fun Rhythm Play! Recommended Games and Hand-Clapping/Hand-Play for Kids
Handmade Musical Instruments for Preschoolers | Instruments to Make Together as Parent and Child (1–10)
Shaka-shaka maracas
Many handmade instruments require scissors or utility knives.
While these tools aren’t extremely dangerous, they are still blades, so many people may worry about letting children use them.
For those people, we recommend this handmade instrument: the Shaka-Shaka Maracas.
They can be made with very simple materials—just a plastic bottle and beads or marbles—so even children around two years old should find them easy to make.
Even if you tie a string to it as shown in the video, there’s no risk of injury if a guardian cuts the string in advance.
Cardboard castanets
If you want to make a handmade instrument without spending money, these cardboard castanets are recommended.
This instrument is an easy DIY project made only from cardboard, plastic bottle caps, and a template.
The cardboard forms the body, and the bottle caps serve as the sound-producing parts.
Even without a template like in the video, you can make it easily as long as you carefully align the positions.
Be careful when cutting the cardboard with scissors, as applying too much force can lead to injuries.
Plastic bottle whistle
A handmade instrument you can easily make with a lidded plastic bottle and a straw: the plastic bottle whistle.
Many people probably remember blowing across the opening of a plastic bottle or a glass bottle to make sounds when they were kids.
This instrument produces sound based on that same principle, and it’s an easy, accessible project that doesn’t even require scissors.
You simply tape the cap onto the mouth of the bottle and then tape a straw on top of the cap—so simple that even 2- to 3-year-olds should find it easy to make.
Handmade Instruments for Preschoolers | Instruments You Can Make with Your Child (11–20)
stamping tube
Stamping tubes are instruments with a distinctive “bohn” timbre that really stands out—Blue Man Group plays them often.
They may seem difficult, but their construction is simple: you just adjust the pitch by adding filler inside the tube, and you can easily shape the tone.
In the video, they use very large cardboard tubes.
Of course, such big tubes aren’t easy to source.
In that case, the core from a roll of plastic wrap works well.
You can’t strike it with slippers like in the video, but using a plastic spatula produces a fairly good sound, so it’s recommended.
Cardboard guiro
Many of you may have had, as children, a souvenir-like instrument where you rub a stick along a ridged board to make sound.
That instrument is called a guiro, and in Japan you sometimes see wooden carvings with that feature.
This cardboard guiro works on the same principle: you rub a stick along the corrugated part on the inside of the cardboard to produce sound.
If you increase the box’s durability, the sound becomes clearer, so if possible, strengthen it—like in the video—by adding glue or similar to reinforce it.
Hairpin kalimba
If you want to develop your child’s sense of pitch, I recommend this hairpin kalimba.
It’s an inexpensive instrument you can make with just four items: a kamaboko board, hairpins, rubber bands, and chopsticks.
It’s a simple instrument where you mount the hairpins onto the kamaboko board using chopsticks and secure them with rubber bands, but the real work starts after fixing the hairpins.
You’ll need to shape the sound by adjusting the angle and length of the hairpins with a hammer or pliers.
This process is perfect for training the ear, so be sure to give it a try.
Chajchas made from plastic bottles
Are you familiar with the Andean folk instruments called chajchas and semillas? They’re percussion instruments that make sound by shaking shells and other objects strung on cords.
These chajchas made from plastic bottles work on the same principle as a handmade instrument.
The tools you need are an awl and scissors, and the materials are a large number of plastic bottle caps and some string—a simple setup that produces a pleasant, rattling clatter.
Since an awl can be dangerous for children to use, that part requires assistance from a parent or guardian.