Mari Elias- Making Music: 6 Instruments You Can Create

This book, "Making Music: 6 Instruments You Can Create", written by Eddie Herschel Oates, is a creative book for students to get involved in music making and engage in their own creative thinking to make music easily. The author gives a very brief introduction at the beginning explaining the different types of instruments there are and how they are played. In this book, the readers can make a balloon tom-tom, wrench xylophone, xylo-drum, garden-hose trumpet, spoon roarer, and a singing sitar. All of the tools that the reader needs to make these instruments can be found at home and are fairly simple, but would also be easier with the help and under the supervision of an adult. These examples of different instruments that young kids can make cover all of the different types of instruments, allowing kids to get some exposure to different types of instruments and how they are played. I love the idea of this book, I would absolutely use this in my classroom one day because I think this can work with almost any age group. Of course this is a fun activity for younger students to understand how music and instruments can work but older kids can get just as creative with it and make some incredible things. The only issue I have with this book is that some of the tools that it suggests that you use could be very dangerous and actually end up harming a child. For example, to make what the author calls the xylo-drum, the stuents has to push nails through a cup. A child could accidentally poke themselves while making it and definitely hurt themselves or others afterwards since the nails could be hanging out the other side. I would take the tools into consideration and think of safer alternatives for my students if I were to do these projects this book suggests.