Instruments

I made these instruments for nursery. I sewed 3 bells in a row on a strip of scrap fabric. Then I wrapped the fabric around a piece of card stock and hot glued it in place, then hot glued the ends together. I pass them out for the kids to shake when we're singing songs that don't have visual aids or actions, like ABCs. I considered hot gluing the bells on, since I don't sew well and it took me hours just to do 10 of these. But I didn't know if they'd jingle as well, and I'm glad I sewed them instead. There are kiddos every week that try to pull them off!

Those tubes standing up in the back of the picture are just toilet paper rolls with beans in the middle and wax paper over the ends. But my 2 year old poked his finger through the wax paper and destroyed them as soon as he got a hold of them. That was my Litmus test I guess. If they can't survive him, they're not going to survive the other nursery kids! So for now I just use the bells.

When I had this calling in Provo a few years ago, the previous music leader passed along to me a box full of "instruments" that she used in junior and senior primary all the time. There were bells much like these and wooden dowels (2 per person so they can hit them together). I have also been saving up formula cans and other containers to contribute to my own instrument box to use as drums. The only thing is, you have to make sure they know that the instruments are ONLY to be used for beating out the rhythm of the song. If they get wild or disruptive, they don't get to have an instrument. I'm a little hesitant to start this in my primary because I'm sure it will be so exciting and, more than likely, a little chaotic at first. But what I saw in my last ward was that once the kids knew the drill, they were really good about only using their instruments for doing the rhythm.