Summer Xylophone

This summer, my husband made us a PVC Pipe Xylophone for the front porch of our library.

A xylophone made of PVC pipes. 

Here is where we found instructions to make it: How to Make a PVC Pipe Xylophone by Frugal Fun 4 Boys.

We delivered it to the front porch of our library where it has lived musically since June 1 when our Summer Reading Program started.

I bought a handful of flyswatters and doctored them with fun foam to make a "mallet". They didn't walk off as I thought they might, but the fun foam only lasts so long with regular use as a mallet, so I have made two replacement "mallets" so far, which is about what I expected.

The signs are posted in our windows. 

I also made up some signs that we posted on the front windows near the xylophone to give families ideas of what to do with it. Most used, I believe, have been the songs. Since the pipes are color coded, anyone can play these color coded songs, no musical ability or music reading required. I'm posting the PDFs here and you're welcome to use them or edit them if you'd like to use them at your library:

• Twinkle Twinkle Little Star
• The Itsy Bitsy Spider
• Early Literacy Starts with You... and this Xylophone
• Science of Sound

The Xylophone cost about $75 for the supplies and my husband donated a day to working on it for us. If you don't have a handy partner, colleague, or friend or if you yourself are not handy, it might be worth asking your local hardware store if they know anyone who might volunteer their time and skills to build it. 

It's been well worth the effort to see people of all ages interacting with it, experimenting with sound and creating music! 

Tune In Tuesday: Asheba's Monkeys

For the inaugural Tune In Tuesday, hosted by Sarah Bean Thompson at GreenBean TeenQueen, I want to share one of my favorite recorded songs to use in storytime.

I do baby storytime weekly at my library and I most frequently use recorded music for everyone to ring bells to. I look for songs with a strong beat and we ring our bells on the beat. "Research... suggests that math and music are related in the brain from very early in life" and rhythm activities are related to math principles such as spatial properties, sequencing, and patterning (click through for more from NAEYC.org!). 

This is one of my favorite songs to use with bells and it's usually stuck in my head all day afterwards. I have had parents ask for it after hearing it in storytime, too! This would be a fun song to use with older preschoolers as an action song (SO MUCH JUMPING!) or even with a felt five monkeys or monkey puppets.




The song is "No More Monkeys" by Asheba and you can find it on the Putomayo Kids album Animal Playground or on Asheba's album No More Monkeys.

Head on over to GreenBean TeenQueen today for this month's Tune In Tuesday, featuring posts about music in library programs!