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Thunder Drum! (and a touch of color)

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Today we added a "Thunder Drum" to our outdoor music space. We first heard about these wonderful instruments from Teacher Tom, who passed along the idea from Jenny over at Let the Children Play.  We had an old metal garbage can.  The one we had needed a little bit of love and some "real" work.

As you can see, ours was a bulging outward on the bottom.
So, we used the hammers to send that bulge down into the can.
Once we were happy with how the bulge looked, we tested it for sound. It sure did sound like thunder!

When the children were napping, I gave the drum a fresh coat of silver paint. 
(Rustoleum brand to try to slow the rust.)

Then, after nap the children went crazy with acrylic paints, giving our whole music area a touch of color






I love how bright and cheery everything looks with a bit of color, I think I like the chimes the best!

Have you been inspired to create music outdoors yet? I've posted quite a few times on this subject and have collected numerous sources of inspiration.  If you have an outdoor music idea, please feel free to add it to the list!
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rachelle | tinkerlab said…
Spray painting during naps! Amy, when do you rest? I love the music-making blog hop and need to find some time to scope these ideas out. You're an amazing resource!! (oh, and I'll be back one day to add our own creations to the list).
May 17, 2011 at 11:33 PM
Amy A @ Child Central Station said…
The spray painting only took a few minutes. I actually spent a good portion of nap time in the hammock today ;).
May 17, 2011 at 11:48 PM
Anonymous said…
My girls would go crazy over something like this but I think our neighbors and all the nieghborhood dogs might not approve.
I would love for my daughter's school to have this but they are in a pretty residential area too. Do you have neighbors that you had to discuss this with? Or am I overestimating as to how loud these things really are?
May 19, 2011 at 7:44 AM
Amy A @ Child Central Station said…
Abbie- We can make quite a bit o noise with all of the instruments and children playing all at once. We are very cognizant of what time we use the instruments. We have not had any complaints from the neighbors. We live in a college town, and our home was a student rental prior to having us move in. The neighbors are so happy to have us making noise during the day rather than the crazy parties and night time noise (with lots of complaints involving the police) in the past. Having the wooden fence does help contain some of the noise and sight too, but the music does travel!
May 19, 2011 at 8:26 AM
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