Rainbow Tambourine

This craft is for preschool and school-age age children with the help of an adult. Children will be able to use their fine motor skills, gross motor skills, listening ears, and their best dance moves for this craft! The cover of the Rainbow Tambourine will be designed with markers in a rainbow pattern. The inside of the tambourine will be filled with rice. The rice will make the music when the child begins to shake or tap their new instrument! Your tambourine will create fun music for the child. The child can follow beats to songs or create their very own songs!

Supplies:

Paper plate

Rainbow colored markers

Stapler

Cotton balls

Liquid glue

One cup of dry rice

4 pieces of fun colored ribbon (5 inch pieces or longer)

Hole puncher

Activity Steps:

Step 1: First, we are going to make the shape of our tambourine. Grab your paper plate from your pile of supplies. We are going to make it into a rainbow, so fold your paper plate in half. You should now have a folded paper plate. Does it look like a rainbow shape?

Step 2: We need to fill our plate with rice. But before we can do this, we need to make sure the rice will stay inside our folded plate. Grab your stapler. Make sure your plate is in the shape of your rainbow with the arch pointed up to the sky and the straight edge to the ground. The plate should remind you of a taco shape! Now, staple up the sides of the plate. Leave some room between the rim of the plate from where you staple. (We will be adding a hole punch there later and do not want the rice to spill out from the holes!)

Be careful not to staple the very top of the arch of the rainbow.

We need to leave room to add in the rice!

Step 3: Next, grab your cup of rice. Carefully, pour it into the top part of the plate. You should now hear it sliding around inside your folded plate. Be careful it does not spill out the top until the next step!

Tip: If you need some more rice, go ahead and add some more in! Just leave room so there is enough to shake around without it being packed in super tight. Otherwise it won’t make a lot of noise.

Step 4: Now, we are going to finish closing up our plate. Grab your stapler again. Staple the tip top of the rainbow now that we have our rice inside! Make sure you do not leave a lot of room for any grains of rice to escape when you shake your tambourine!

Step 5: Now, we are going to color our tambourine. Grab your red marker first and color in an arch. Do the same thing to the next few colors, just like a rainbow!

Tip: The colors of the rainbow in order are red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple!

Step 6: Next, flip your plate to the other side and repeat the process! Color in your arches of the rainbow.

Step 7: Now, our rainbow needs some clouds! Take your cotton balls and softly pull them apart. This will give them a cloud effect. Grab your liquid glue and glue them along the base of the plate! Our tambourine now has a fun decoration!

Step 8: Next, we are going to add some ribbon to our tambourine! This way, when we shake our tambourine, we will have something that streams in the wind! Take your hole puncher and punch 4 holes on the rim of the plate. You can space them out evenly, two on each side, or wherever you want your streamers to go! But make sure you do not punch in past your staples!

Step 9: Now, take your ribbon. Pull one end of the ribbon through one of the holes and tie it inside the hole. Do this to each of the four holes you created. You should now have some streamers for your tambourine!

Step 10: Finally, we are done making our Rainbow Tambourine, but we are not finished with it. Give it a shake and listen to the sound it makes! Wow! Tap it along to your favorite songs or compose your own songs! Have fun with your new instrument and dance along!

~Made by Sarah