Making DIY egg shakers at home is a fun activity that can lead to more activities which include language, music, rhyme, and repetition. This activity can also help the development of gross motor skills.
For This Activity You Will Need the Following:
- Any small plastic container you can tape together
- Tape to wrap around the containers
- Rice, sand or glitter to fill the containers with (anything that you think will make a range of different sounds and noises).
How to Make the Shakers:
- All you need to do is fill one half of the container with your chosen ingredient and then you tape the two halves together
- Next, shake the container to make sure it has been taped together securely.
Ideas on How to Use Your DIY Shakers:
- Start to sing a favourite song and then use the shaker to shake to the beat
- Make up your own songs, rhyming the last word in the sentence – then explain to your child how rhyming works – that the words must sound similar – cat/ mat/ pat/ flat etc
- Help children to make up their own rhymes. Children can be very imaginative!
- Literacy can be explored in the beat of a rhyme. Some children may be able to shake the shaker to their name like “lyd-i-a” (3 beats).
- You can use the shakers to play games like hiding an item and shaking faster and slower as you would for saying warmer and cold when getting nearer and further away from a hidden object
- You can use them in maths games, such as shaking the shake four times slowly etc – you could make your own board game for this
- There are lots more possibilities that you could come up with too.