Engineering Instruments
Engineering Instruments focuses on homemade instruments made from reused and/or cheap materials from your favorite dollar store. Most of the instrument projects highlighted here come from the Resource Area For Teaching collection of Idea Sheets. With a focus on the engineering design process, this workshop allows students to then use engineering to modify and improve the instruments they have built. Happy noise-making!
Instruments and Sound Experiments, Physics of Sound Resources, and more
Ah, Music
Ah, Music! is about composers and instruments. It’s about artists and performers. It’s about history—from the earliest music through classical, modern, jazz, and popular times. It’s about diversity and pleasure ...
Buzz Off, from RAFT
Buzz Off, when whirled around, makes a sound like an insect. A fantastic project for engineering the way it performs by making modifications to the original design ...
Coconut Can Percussion
Turn a coconut can into a percussion instrument you can shake, tap, and scrape to create a beat ...
Design Inspirations from RAFT
Combine two unrelated ideas to inspire a creative new design! Engineers often use everyday objects to stimulate creative ideas. For example, an early ballpoint pen designer might have had a flash of inspiration while looking ...
Finger Flute
Sturdy cardboard tubes, straws, tape, and other inexpensive materials can be used to create this fun noisemaker! ...
Fox Went Out on a Chilly Night
In this glowing new vision of Spier’s beloved classic, follow the wily fox as he roams a sleepy New England town in search of a meal, with tones and textures so vivid you can almost ...
Going to the Zoo
Now you can go along too, as Tom Paxton's classic song comes to life in this boisterous picture book ...
I Am an Old Horned Toad
With beautiful watercolor illustrations by Jessica Helm, a forward by Petey Mesquitey, a CD including the horned toad song, and a whole page of extra facts about horned toads, this book is fun, educational and ...
IDEAS Engineering Journal – Virtual Edition
The IDEAS Engineering Journal is meant to be used to engineer improvements to an existing design. Have you built a glider or a wobble head rattle writer or ANYTHING? Use this journal to brainstorm modifications, ...
Magic School Bus in the Haunted Museum: A Book about Sound
In a companion book to the new PBS series starring Lily Tomlin, readers learn about sound and how it is made as Ms. Frizzle's class spends the night in a sounds museum that turns out ...
Making Musical Instruments with Kids
Written for adults, this hands-on guide demonstrates how to make easy musical instruments with children. Detailed instructions are included for making more than 60 unique instruments that are suitable for children as young as five ...
Martin the Guitar (Book and CD)
This charming children's story will delight music lovers of all ages. Little Martin the Guitar lives in Mr. Beninato's Music Store in New York City. He wants so much to be adopted and taken home ...
NC State Engineering Design Process
One of our favorite versions of the Engineering Design Process, especially the part of failure! ...
Octopus’s Garden
Based on the lyrics of the world famous Beatles song, this glorious picture book follows five children on a magical journey through the Octopus's garden ...
RAFT
Resource Area for Teaching Idea Sheets - a collection of more than 700 searchable ideas. All use easy-to-find cheap materials ...
Rubber-Band Banjos and a Java Jive Bass
Make a hip-hoppin' java jive bass out of an old coffee can. Put on your homemade tuxedo and conduct your own orchestra. Those are just some of the fun projects and activities you'll enjoy as ...
Science Experiments with Sound & Music
34 easy-to-do activities that demonstrate the scientific concepts behind sound waves, pitch, acoustics, scales, etc ...
Sound Projects with a Music Lab
Flutes, harps, guitars, pianos, drums All musical instruments use fundamental properties of physics to produce their sounds. In this instructive manual, Robert Gardner explains how to build homemade versions of a variety of instruments, all ...
Star Wars Sound Machine
Adding a Styrofoam cup as a sounding board to a metal Slinky turns it into a Star Wars sound machine! ...
STEMAZing Journal Hack
Make graph paper STEMAZing journals that require no staples or tape using an old bookbinding trick ...
Straw Oboe
Using two different diameter straws, create an oboe with just a simple cut to create a reed and a little bit of practice ...
This Land Is Your Land
This classic ballad is brought to life in a richly illustrated edition for the whole family to share. Woody Guthrie's powerful lyrics and Kathy Jakobsen's detailed paintings invite readers on a journey across the country, ...
This Old Band
What kinds of instruments would you imagine a band of cowboys playing? Surely nothing fancy, but they can still make do with what they have, like jugs, combs, boots, and whatever else they can find ...
Tongue Depressor Harmonica
Create these #STEMontheCheap harmonicas using large craft sticks, rubber bands, index cards, tape, and straws. Then, let young engineers decide which design is better. Encourage them to support their claim with evidence! Continue the engineering ...
Treasures for Teachers of Tucson
Our resource center has a wide variety of unique and useful materials you might spend days or weeks trying to find. Whether it’s plastic bottle caps and fabric scraps or golf balls and office supplies, ...
Tubby the Tuba
When the recording of Tubby the Tuba was first released, it met with instant success, and it went on to sell 13 million copies. Now, these classic characters have been reimagined by Henry Cole in ...
Woody Guthrie, Poet of the People
This is an introductory biography presented as a picture book with a brief lyrical text and powerful, hand-tinted, woodcut-like illustrations. It includes the complete lyrics to “This Land Is Your Land” and excerpts from his ...