"You got to MOVE it, MOVE it!"

Last week in preschool was "percussion week" on our month long journey through the instrument families. Each instrument family has "rules," like criteria you have to meet to belong to the club. To be in the brass family you have to be 1) made of metal, 2) have 3 buttons, and 3) you have to go "ppppppppp" to play it (they love to do this - imagine that). To be in the string family you have to 1) have strings, and 2) pluck or bow the strings to play them. Sometimes the families will feel sorry for certain instruments and allow them into the club even though they break the rules, but overall the rules stand firm.

So I started each class this week explaining the rules of the percussion family, which only had one rule - you have to hit it or shake it. Since this was such an easy rule, I went ahead and asked them what kinds of instruments would be percussion instruments. In most classes, the kids went right for the instruments that we've already talked about in class, such as a drum, triangle, xylophone, maracas, etc. Then I would lead them to figuring out that we can use pretty much anything as a percussion instrument, like the floor or a garbage can or something fun.

Remember my cute class from the penguin blog? Well, here they are making blog news again. When I asked them what kind of things could be percussion instruments, right away they went for non conventional items. In fact, the first answer I got was:

"WE can be percussion instruments, because we can hit us AND we can SHAKE it!"