Gardens & Growing Level: Early Grades - Creative music

Plant Pot Playing (timbre, pitch, structure)

You need lots of plastic plant pots for the children to use instead of musical instruments so maybe ask parents to donate any spare ones, as well as a few surplus, small gardening implements. It's good to do the Plant Pot activities outdoors if possible!

Lead the children to discover that the plants pots (being various sizes, volumes and thicknesses) make different-pitched sounds when you hit them using beaters or garden canes. With help, the children could put several plant pots in order of higher or lower pitch. By chance, we discovered pots that could, more or less, play a tune!

There's a distinction to be made between making music up, which is original and doesn't deliberately replicate a known tune, and playing 'by ear' a known tune, invented by somebody else. When I ask for music to be made up, I generally find that adults try to play a known tune whereas children prefer to make up their own. Both are useful activities with their own value but making up original music lends itself to greater creativity.

More Garden-Music Discoveries

1/ Hang plant pots upside down by tying a big knot in a length of string and threading it through a hole at the bottom so that the knot is inside the pot and the pots hang down like bells. If the pots are hung in clusters they may be shaken to create an interesting sound.

2/ Bang the plant pots on the table or the floor, either open side down or with base of the pot. The children may come up with different ways of creating a sound such as banging two pots together.

3/ Bang on a trowel with a garden cane.

4/ Shake dried peas or beans in a tin.

Allow time for experimenting first, then create more structured tasks for pairs or small groups of children, such as creating a sequence of different sounds that can be repeated. For a whole class piece of music you could put the children into four groups:

• shake pot clusters
• hit trowels with cane beaters
• bang pots on the floor
• shake peas in a tin

You be the 'conductor', indicating by big hand gestures which group makes their sound next and which groups should stay quiet. It's fun!