Tutorial: Quiet Drums

I whipped these up sometime during December for one of our Advent Calendar activities. These were great for William and he loved them! Aldous plays too rough with them, really, so I wouldn't recommend these for children three and under. Probably not even for more gentle children because the parts could be choking hazards.

What you need: empty cans, masking tape, balloons, felt, hot glue gun, marker...optional bells on a string.

 check your can edge for sharp edges.

 smoosh it down with the scissors blade (the metal is soft enough)

Use a piece of tape over the sharp edge, just in case.

cut the neck off of a round balloon, just past where the neck begins to expand into the ball part. You may have to practice to get the right spot, but marked the place w/ marker on mine so you could see where to cut.

 Stretch the balloon over the opening of the can.

Using a length of duct tape, wrap it around to hold the edge of the balloon down. Try to have the tape edge align with the edge of the can.

Cover the rest of the can with duct tape.

 Assemble you glue gun and felt.

 Use a marker to trace the bottom of the can.

Cut out the circle JUST inside your traced line.

 apply hot glue

 press the felt circle onto the hot glue and let cool. The purpose of the felt bottom is to eliminate any "loud" areas on the drum.

 Look at all of these pretty drums!! These really just take minutes to make.

 And, all of the nice quiet drum bottoms.

 You can do something similar with canisters. I happened to have this jingle bell garland and I put every other bell inside the can, still on the string, then hot glued the canister lid over it.

Can you see the bells on the inside of the clear lid? These are really great because they jingle but aren't a loud jarring sound that will make you insane.

Here are the boys jamming away, with chop sticks! You can use popsicle sticks, pencils, etc.

Get drumming!!