Gardens & Growing Level: Key Stage 1 - Creative music

The Garden Band (structure, texture, timbre)

The Garden Band is where the children use gardening implements to create original music! These are the instruments you could use:

• Watering can drum (tap the body with hands)
• Garden rake guitar (strum the tines with a stick)
• Trowel tinger (hit the metal part with a stick)
• Hosepipe horn (blow into it with nearly closed, 'buzzing' lips to make the sound)
• Plant pot shakers (tie plastic plant pots together with string, upside down and shake them)

For the hosepipe horns you will need a hosepipe, plastic funnels, duct tape. I suggest that you make one yourself first, before helping the children to make their own:

Cut a garden hose into lengths and give one to each child, with a plastic funnel. The children inset one into the other (depending on which has a slightly bigger hole), then they secure it with duct tape. To make a sound, you have to purse your lips against the hole and make them vibrate together enough to produce a rude noise! This makes the air inside the pipe vibrate, which creates the sound. For a really deluxe version you could buy cornet (brass instrument) mouth mouthpieces to push into the end of the hose!

photograph courtesy of Dana Gorman

What to Play

Children usually produce the best creative music when they have guidelines rather than a completely free invitation to make something up. This is an opportunity to do what jazz musicians do, which is to use an agreed structure as a basis for improvising. It's best if they don't all play at once, for instance. You may like to download the graphic score, or to make up your own. When using this graphic score, the children may play literally to a steady pulse - one watering can symbol = one bang on the watering can - or they could play more freely eg several bangs per symbol.