Rainbow Water Xylophone

Rainbow Water Xylophone | Mama Papa Bubba

As we stared out the window at the blanket of dust covering Mahboula and wondered what to do with the last bit of our day today, I realized that we’d have to come up with something fun to do indoors.  Selfishly, I wanted it to be something that was fairly quick and easy to pull together, but at the same time, I wanted it to be something that would keep Miss G happily engaged for a while. That’s when I remembered all of the glass milk bottles I’ve been squirrelling away for the last several months in hopes of putting them to good use.  I figured they’d be perfect for creating a rainbow water xylophone and it really doesn’t get much easier than filling a bunch of glass jars with water and a couple of drops of food colouring, does it?!

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So that’s just what we did.  After filling the bottles with different amounts of water and adding some liquid food colouring to make rainbow colours {Grae loved that part}, we brought our filled milk bottles to the kitchen table and lined them up beside one another making sure to leave a little bit of space in between each.

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We also brought along a metal straw, a couple of hard plastic reusable straws, a couple of wooden chopsticks, and some teaspoons to use as mallets and Gracen got started with her music making.

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At first, she experimented with tapping the bottles in different ways to make different types of sounds…

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Then she experimented with some different types of ‘mallets’ and compared the types of sounds they made.  All of our options actually worked very well, but she particularly enjoyed having a mallet in each hand so that she could create double the noise. ☺

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Then, before long, we had her iPod and speakers out and she was accompanying some of her very favourite songs…  Talk about jamming out!  {We won’t mention the fact that things got so intense that a spill clean-up and yellow water refill were required. ☺}

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When it came time for me to prepare dinner, the water xylophone came with us.  Grae moved a small table into the kitchen, then brought the bottles over one-by-one, and provided musical entertainment all the way through my lasagna soup preparations.  Such a simple activity idea, but it was a total hit in our house!

And to get an idea of what our rainbow water xylophone sounded like, here are a couple of clips of my little musician in action…

 

 

 

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