Music: Xylophone! (Part 4 of 4)

Recently, one of my co-workers was reminiscing about her musical toys as a child. She had a small xylophone about 12” long. It was the perfect size for her to play with by herself, but imagine if she’d wanted to share her instrument with others! This xylophone is 32” long – perfect for sharing with a couple friends, if you’d like. As the children strike different bars, they will learn about cause-and-effect as well as how to make patterns of noise.


Check out The Adventurous Child for more information on this xylophone and other neat musical instruments.

Music: Chimes (3 of 4)

Chimes are truly captivating. They may not be as familiar as drums or violins, but they still feature prominently in music. You may recognize their sound from the popular song “Carol of the Bells” or from the end credits of Sesame Street in the 1980s.

These particular chimes make for tons of fun standing alone, or you could add them to The Adventurous Child’s drum panel and drum set for a mini orchestra. The Chime Panel has a full scale of eight notes that allow children and adults to play a song and sing along. Children can hear contrasting sounds as they hit each note. What a great lesson in sound imitation!

Music: Drums! (Part 2 of 4)

Watch your children have fun with the drum set and drum panel. The drum set has three drums with varying lengths that produce contrasting bass tones, making hitting them an interesting lesson in sound differentiation. The drum panel has long and short tubes to provide contrasting sounds to each other. The drum head is made of an acrylic material that is unbreakable. Two mallets are provided, but the children can also play the drums using their hands or objects found on the playground.

Drums are fun, but they are also educational: “Children’s personal tempo (ability to feel and express a steady beat) correlates with achievement test scores in grades 1 and 2 (Weikert et al, 1987)” (Parlakian and Lerner, Young Children, March 2010, p. 17).



Beware: it may not be enough to simply watch your children hit the drums. We won’t laugh at you if you make some noise, too. (Our fun-loving group at The Adventurous Child has been known to play the drums for stress relief occasionally.)

Music (Part 1 of 4)

"Music gives a soul to the universe,
wings to the mind,
flight to the imagination,
and life to everything."

~ Plato ~

Music is all around us: the radio is on during your morning drive to work, music is in the wind and trees outside, it’s in the humming of a child as she swings, and it’s in the steady beat of an infant learning to clap. Music is one of the most ubiquitous phenomena in nature, and it’s also frequently overlooked as a learning device for many subjects.

In the next few weeks we’re going to talk about the importance of music in outdoor education for children six months to six years old, and how The Adventurous Child can supply your outdoor classroom with musical equipment for play and for learning.

Music and the Outdoors

The Adventurous Child believes children benefit from music in the outdoor classroom. The main problem we find with doing music outdoors is that the instruments have to be made in such a way that vandals cannot damage or destroy the sounds the instruments make. Many playground musical instruments are not tuned and do not have contrasting sounds. This defeats the purpose of having music outside. Creating a chime panel that has a full scale and where each pipe on the panel is tuned allows children to hear the correct note and for a musically inclined person to actually play a song. For drums or drum panels, having contrasting sounds between each drum allows the children to discriminate between the sounds. Using flat aluminum bars, properly tuned, to create a xylophone is another excellent way to give children real instruments outdoors. Providing music outdoors helps create a classroom environment and adds interesting activities for children to use.

What can be done better outdoors than indoors? Part 2

Loud, noisy items are wonderful things to use outdoors. Children do not have to use their quiet indoor voices; they can whoop and holler and express themselves in different ways out on the playground than they can indoors. Musical instruments are a wonderful thing outside. They emit soft and loud noises and allow children to express themselves using different tools that make sounds. Large drum sets on the playground that make deep, bass sounds create both a sensory input from vibration of the instrument as well as the sound. Drums can also be make from pots and pans that may be in your cooking area. Chime panels and xylophones provide another opportunity for children to actually play and hear the notes in a full scale. There are many Early Learning Standards that are met by allowing children to use musical instruments and play and make loud sounds and noises. A good reference for which Early Learning Standards are met by using musical instruments is on The Adventurous Child’s web site. What ways have you seen children make sounds outdoors?