Easy-Peasy Music Shakers

We’ve been really lucky with the weather in Edinburgh, since moving back three months ago. Lots of blue skies in summer and golden sunshine in Autumn. But, of course, we do also get rainy days, and in a quest to stop the kids begging for Netflix all day, it’s good to have some quick and easy craft ideas up your sleeve. These easy-peasy music shakers definitely fit the bill, and as an added bonus the kids can play with them afterwards – they are quite noisy though, so proceed at your own risk!

DIY Music Shakers 01

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DIY Music Shakers materials 01

What you will need:

  • some paper cups
  • strong and wide tape (I used these colourful ones I found in a craft shop, but you could use e.g. plain parcel tape instead)
  • a pair of scissors
  • various fillings for your shakers, e.g. bottle tops, dried chickpeas, or lentils

You could use a variety of other fillings too, such as other dried pulses, rice, small shells or pebbles. The three above are what we happened to have in the house when I made these shakers. The boys loved listening to the different sounds the different fillings made, and guessing which is which.

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DIY Music Shakers materials 02

Step 1: 

Add a handful of filling to a paper cup.

DIY Music Shakers Tutorial 01

Step 2:

Place another paper cup on top.

DIY Music Shakers Tutorial 02

Step 3:

Wrap some tape around the middle to join them together. Make sure there are no gaps, so your filling won’t spill out!

DIY Music Shakers 02

I added some extra lengths of tape around each shaker, to make them double secure and to make them more colourful. There, done! Told you it was easy-peasy.

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Comments: 2

  • reply
    8 July 2020

    Hello, I was hoping to get in touch about using your lovely photos for a dementia activity resource I create. We want to show how you can simply make music instruments, and your pictures are really lovely. Would it be possible to use your two images in our resource to share with people with dementia?

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