Making Rain Shakers

We are following a Noah's Ark theme at the moment and last Friday's rainy weather couldn't have been more appropriate for the activity I had planned for the children - rain shakers!  I have seen various ways of making "rain shakers" or "rain sticks" on the internet using clear plastic containers which enables the child to see the contents of the rain shaker at the same time as shaking them, but I decided to experiment with the sound of the contents against a tin container instead.

A little while ago I was given two tins of posh biscuits which (once consumed) I saved for the purpose of making into rain shakers.  I sourced the contents to be added to the containers from things I already had in the kitchen and put them into a tub for the children to scoop out and empty into the tins as they wished. Apart from benefiting from the rainy weather that day, we also benefited from doing the activity in the conservatory where the sound of the rain hitting the roof of the conservatory could be heard loudly. I encouraged the children to listen to the sound of the rain and to compare that to the sounds of the various items they were scooping into their tins.  We tested out the sound of the pasta against the table and compared that to the sound of the rice and the lentils etc.  Wugs realised that the pasta made the loudest noise so he took a handful of it and put it in his shaker.  Dooey seemed to focus closely on how to scoop the contents into the tin, which ones required a scoop and which ones required him to use his fingers.  

Once the boys had finished filling their shakers, I put the lids on.  Wugs asked to test out his shaker before asking me to re-open it so he could add in some more items (!).  When they were finally sealed, they asked to decorate the tops with some shiny tape (which I helped them with - making sure the lids were fully sealed down) and then they spent all afternoon decorate their shakers with stickers.

Last Friday certainly felt as though we were in the ark watching torrential rain from the comfort of our conservatory and then re-creating the sound of rain inside of it.  

What we used:
Two tin biscuit tubes (a Pringle tube would also work well)
A tub
Red and green lentils, pasta shapes, spaghetti, rice, black peppercorns (beads, paper clips, toothpicks, any small objects would work)
Spaghetti
Shiny tape
Stickers

Please click here to see our other Noah's Ark-related activities.