Students got a break during the past two weeks. Some students went on vacation while others stayed on to take special intersession classes. I decided to teach a two week course on Latin dance. During the class we discussed foods that came from Latin America, the countries where these dances came from, and more. We also learned to about the many musical instruments used in the bands for salsa and merengue. One of those instruments is the Maraca (or rumba shaker.) Students incorporated the maracas into one of the dances we danced. We created our own maracas doing the following:
Materials
-4 styrofoam cups
-crayons
-duct tape (colored if possible)
-dry pasta noodles or beans
Instructions
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| Decorate 2 of the cups with crayons. Then place one cup inside of each of the decorated cups. |
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| Pour about a 1/4 cup of dry ingredients (spaghetti pictured) into one of the cups. |
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| Place the second empty cup on top of the cup with dry ingredients. |
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| Take duct tape and seal the two cups together. |
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| Shake! |
Students would have preferred to use markers or pencils to draw on the cups with, but the pencils could puncture the cups and the markers got messy. I found crayons to stay on the cups without rubbing off on their fingers.
I suggested using 4 cups instead of two because using the styrofoam cups in a dance, it was likely for students to drop them or puncture the outside cup. The second cup provided extra protection from spilling your dry ingredients all over the place. If you are just creating them for one time use, you could easily use 2 cups instead of 4.
