A Green Music and Art Project

Enjoy making fun music instrument shakers without spending a dime. This is art project that incorporates music and being green, while on a budget. Try it with your students, children, campers, or church group.

What you will need to make Green Music Shakers

Before you decide to purchase any art materials, encourage your children and students to save containers for a few weeks. Almost any type of recyclable container can make a great green music shaker. Good examples are baby food jars, small plastic containers, spaghetti boxes, metal cans (with lids), film containers, gourds, and other recyclable containers that can be closed or sealed.

To make the music shakers make noise, you will need recyclable materials to put on the inside of the container. Good examples of music shaker materials include beans, seeds, small beads, pasta, rice, aquarium rocks, and even shells. Be creative and use paperclips or throw away materials like bottle caps or soda can tabs.

You can even encourage the children to go on a scavenger hunt for some of the music shaker materials, such as small rocks, shells, or large seeds. Many of the music shakers that the children may be familiar with like maracas came about by societies that used ready made materials to make music. They used the environment around them to make music instruments.

Choose your art materials depending on the type of containers you have available. Acrylic paint, colorful tape, and permanent markers can be used for some surfaces like film containers or baby food jars. Cardboard boxes and oatmeal containers can be painted using art paints. Because the children are making music shakers, all of the decorations should be flat 2D designs, not materials like beads or buttons that can fall off while the children are playing with their music shakers.

Making Green Music Shakers

First the children should decorate the outside of the recyclable containers. If you want them to go on a scavenger hunt to find small rocks for the inside of the music shakers, then you can do that with them the first day. Be sure that the containers can be closed or sealed with a lid. You do not want children to use metal cans with sharp edges for their shakers. These cannot be reliably sealed and the sharp edges may not be safe for younger children.

Fill the decorated containers with the beads, rice, and other shaker materials once the recyclable containers are dry. Have the children create two or three different types of music shakers using different recyclable containers and filler materials. Talk about how each music shaker sounds and discuss why there is a difference in sound. For example, a glass container may have a higher music pitch than the thudding of a cardboard box full of pasta noodles.

Music Shaker Fun

Once you have completed the music shakers, play some fun music and enjoy a game of freeze dance with music shakers or make your own green music shaker parade.