Making Rain sticks

This week our topic was the different countries of the world so I decided to focus on the rain stick originating from South America. I thought this would be a great way to integrate art, music and fine motor skills into our English lessons.

When ever I think of a new idea my first action to consult with google for inspiration. I came across a beautiful blog named “The Imagination Tree” and was immediately taken by its heading “creative play and learning for kids”

There was a beautiful posting from 2011 on making Rain Sticks

http://www.theimaginationtree.com/2011/02/diy-rain-stick.html

So with this image in mind and the fantastic steps provided I set out to plan my lesson

The first step was to find some long cardboard tubes ( fortunately I had these from my Halloween sign posts I had made). I decided to close one end off before the lesson so that we could decorate and fill the rain sticks without to much hassle. The best way was to use a hot glue gun and let them dry over night so that in the morning all I needed to do was use a craft knife to cut the cardboard into the circle shape.

Just before the lesson I cut up different colours of contact paper and made these stickers with the formtec computer programme (again inspiration from http://www.theimaginationtree.com/2011/02/diy-rain-stick.html). I also had my stash of stickers that i have collected over the year. As this was only a 30 minute lesson with 3 year olds I had to keep it quite simple. I would love to do this with older children and get them to draw patterns based on the South American Art Work.

So lets get started Rabbit Bang…

After an introduction to the topic we started our decoration. Focusing on the children s fine motor skills we slowly pealed the backing off the stickers and said what colour we were about to stick on the cardboard.

We had to make sure that all the brown cardboard was covered up and to smooth the stickers down as best we could so that there were no bumps.

When we had used up all the coloured stickers we were able to move onto the animal prints. If we could say what colour and guess what animal they were from we could use these stickers too.

We had to make sure to peel them off the paper carefully and spread them out nicely.

When we had used all the stickers we could finish decorating with Teacher Sams special stickers.

We had a lot of fun

We then poured a combination of black beans and rice into the sticks and then Teacher Sam glued a lid on.

Our completed rain sticks

After, we played with our rain sticks and used to to beat to the drum of the music. It was fun

Rabbit Bang