At just about every store I walk into, I am constantly finding these brightly rainbow colored rubber bands designed to use on a kid’s loom. Â How can a teacher resist picking up a set for the classroom? I couldn’t so now that I have oodles of these awesome rubber bands, Â I have been looking for ideas to put them into good use…
Of course, I could break down and buy a kids loom to use with the rubber bands but I prefer to find other ways to use them in my classroom. So my first use was to invite my class to make their own rainbow rubber band colored musical instruments….
Inspired by all the recent explorations we have been having with a xylophone, this was a way of making our own version of a xylophone only instead of tapping the keys to make a sound, we talked about how we had to strum or pluck the bands to make a sound…
In my classroom we also call these strummies based on the book “Red and Yellow’s Noisy Night (The Olive Branch)” by Josh Selig…
“Red and Yellow’s Noisy Night” is a wonderful book that I have written about before and you can read more about our strummies and this book in this post: Making our own Musical Strummies…
To make our rainbow loom musical instruments (or strummies) we used gift boxes I had picked up from the Dollar Tree. The children simply placed the rubber bands around an open gift box and they were ready to begin strumming up their own music…
Some of my students spent a long time using lots of rubber bands and rearranging the colors on their boxes until they were happy with their strummies. Whether the children added lots of rubber bands or only a few, the process was a good work out for fine motor skills…
You will notice that one box makes two strummies since the lid or the bottom of the box can be used. The sound of the strummy changes depending on how the rubberbands are sitting on the box. If the band is tighter on top then the sound will be higher, if the band is looser on top then the sound will be lower. So the children learned they can change the pitch of each rubber band by adjusting each one around the box one way or another…
And the best way to listen to a strummy is to put the back side of the box to your ear while strumming the open side (no headphones or legos are necessary:)…
Lots of musical language is introduced through this simple process (pitch, strum, pluck, sound, vibration) and a great way to use up those rainbow loom rubber bands that I have collected. Now to figure out what to do with the rest of them!
Available on Amazon