Kids Activity: Making Musical Instruments From Recycled Trash

Kids love making noise and at our place, making musical instruments is a pretty fun pastime. We’d reach into the recycling bins for raw materials, and with a little paint and inspiration, came up with some pretty cool sounding musical instruments.

For a recycling activity that’s a little different than the usual fare, why not make musical instruments?

Milk chub maracas

Milk chubs are those cool, chubby milk containers that have a screw top lid. The outer plastic wrap can be peeled off leaving a white container that can be decorated in a fun motif.

For materials, you will need dimensional paint (Scribbles brand is my favorite) or markers, some glitter glue, sequins, or even stickers. You will also need a clean chub container with lid, and a small handful of dried beans.

Step 1: Decorate the outside of the milk chub in a fun design.

Step 2: Let dry over night.

Step 3: Place a spoonful of beans inside the chub, replace the lid, and shake. Ole’!

Disposal plastic plate tambourine

For this activity, you will need a couple of used (but clean) plastic picnic plates such as the type made by Solo, glue, a handful of beans, crepe paper, and materials from the craft box such as glitter pens, sequins, or stickers.

Step 1: Decorate the “backside” of each plastic plate. Let dry.

Step 2: Cut the crepe paper into 12 inch streamers. Glue three or four strands to the bottom edge of one of the plates.

Step 3: Place a spoonful of beans in the plate with the streamers. Drape the streamers so that they are outside of the plate.

Step 4: Invert the second plate over the first and glue in place. Let the glue dry before shaking your tambourine.

An Amazon rain stick

An amazon rain stick is a long, hollow cactus stem that has had the thorns pushed back inside, and then has been allowed to dry. As the stick is turned from side to side, it makes the sound of failing rain.

Several years ago, my daughter and I made an Amazon rain stick from ten discarded plastic cups, some strong adhesive (silicone calking works best), a handful of beans, string, a few beads, and some brown spray paint. It’s easy to make following this instructions and using the photograph for reference:

Step 1: Cut a 1/2 inch diameter hole in the base of eight of the cups.

Step 2: Glue 4 sets of punched cups together, matching base to bases.

Step 3: Now, glue the four paired sets to each other, matching rims to rims

Step 4: Glue the uncut ninth cup to one end.

Step 5: Drop a large handful of beans into the open cup at the opposite end. Sealed closed by gluing the last cup “rim to rim.”

Step 6: Spray the “rain stick” brown. Wrap with string and beads to give it some visual interest.

To play, tip the rain stick back and forth.

A pop bottle xylophone

Kids love making music by blowing across the tops of pop bottles or running a wet finger on the rim of a glass. You can make a very easy water xylophone using eight clean but used 20 oz bottles filled to various levels with water.

Here’s a handy chart to tell you how much water to put in each bottle to create a complete musical scale:

Do 7 ounces
Re 9.5 oz.
Mi 14.5 oz.
Fa 14 oz.
So 16.5 oz.
La 17.5 oz.
Ti 18.5 oz.
Do 19 oz.

An Coffee mate canister drum

We buy our Coffeemate creamer in the economy size which leaves us with a nice sized cardboard container that makes a fabulous drum.

Materials needed include some leftover spray paint, glue, baubles from the craft box, and those chopsticks you brought home the last time you ate Chinese food.

Step 1: Remove the canisters snap on lid and set aside.

Step 2: Spray the canister with paint. Let dry 30 minutes.

Step 3: Decorate the canister in a geometric pattern OR design your own.

Step 4: Replace the snap on lid and use the chopsticks to lightly tap on the lid to create the sound of a drum.

Step 5: Got two canisters? Tie them together with string to make a set of bongo drums that can be played by hand.