We love music – listening, moving and dancing to it, singing along with it, relaxing by it, playing instruments to accompany it, and in particular we love to make our own music.

An instrument we made with the children last year has been in constant use in our music corner and the children never tire of playing with it.

It began as a science experiment when we were talking to the children about the way sound travels through air.  We filled four identical bottle with different levels of water.

The result being, the more water the bottle contained, the less air it held and the deeper the sound it resonated, less water in the bottle means more air, resulting in a higher pitch being produced. We use a wooden drumstick to tap out the different sounds.

The children commented on how similar the sounds of the musical bottles are to the sounds made by our very popular  marimba, a wonderful instrument Sherry’s Uncle Bill made for his grandchildren some years ago and has (fortunately) made its way to us at kinder!

Some children found it quite difficult to determine which bottles created the higher and deeper pitches but older children might be better able to distinguish the difference and line them up from deepest pitch to highest.

Due to its constant use we have had to replace the liquid in the bottles over time and using different coloured water simply adds a new dimension to a favourite instrument.

We like to provide the children with a selection of bottles, glasses or jars, a tub of water and a funnel, and allow them to make their own music by filling the containers with as much or as little water as they want. The more containers they have the greater the variety of pitch they can create.

Simple science is music to the ears!