DIY Musical bunting

As well as music I love making things. Happily my children are partial to a bit of craft as well, and can almost always be counted on to join in with a bit of a crafting afternoon. Especially when it rains. They are back at school now, but I realised I hadn’t shared with you something I made with them to brighten up a rainy day in the last holidays. This time it is not a musical instrument that we made, but we thought it would be fun to have a go at making some musical bunting.

I had been thinking about making some musical bunting for a while, I wasn’t sure if we would have a go at making different instruments (maybe that is something we can do over the summer holidays) or whether we would go for musical notation. As it was just the Easter holidays we really needed something we could do in one day rather than over a couple of days, so musical notation it was.

I started out by drawing musical notation shapes out on paper to make a template. I then cut out our template and used it to cut out the same shapes on some cardboard we had at home from a delivery from a rather well known company. For some of the notation I just cut the shapes out with a pair of scissors, and for one in particular I had to use a pencil to poke holes in the cardboard so that I could cut out the middle part of the note.

By the end I had several pieces of musical notation, all representing different length notes. I stuck with simple musical notation as this was our first attempt, and given that I was doing this with my two children aged, at the time, very nearly 7 and 9. It gave me an opportunity, mainly with my youngest as she is just starting her musical instrument lessons, to talk to them about the notation I chose to use, what it was called, what it was used for, how many beats the notes lasted for if they appeared in a piece off music etc.

Now so far I had done all of the preparation for this activity myself, as I wasn’t sure if the children would enjoy it or not. They absolutely did, and I think if we repeated this activity I would let them do much more of it independently. My son has been starting some music theory classes at school and so he would now be able to chose what notation he would like to include rather than just sticking to the simplest as we did this time.

Time to decorate, and while it would have worked to get out felt pens, as I had so far done all of the prep myself, I wanted the children to get stuck in. So I got out our paints.

We have a set of Scola Artmix 600ml paints in various colours that we bought years ago, before Covid and all of the lockdowns. Those paints are largely still going strong, and believe you me we spent many an afternoon painting during lockdown given that we were at home such a lot, and we have only had to replace the white so far. The paints were initially expensive, but they have lasted so well I would heartily recommend them. You can have a look at the same set if you click on this link: Scola Artmix Paints

So, back to our musical bunting. I was able to give the children an even number of musical notation shapes, because anything other than the two of them having the exact same number of shapes to paint would have resulted in an afternoon of fighting rather than painting. If you do this activity with more than one child, for your own sanity, please make sure that you make enough for every child involved to have the same number of shapes to paint or decorate otherwise! They spent a good half an hour painting both sides of the musical notation, and then set them to dry.

Once dry I punched holes in the cardboard shapes and string them with some twine I had in my cupboard before hanging them up in our front room at our fireplace. At this fireplace we also had a pom pom garland with little fairy lights on, and this colourful musical notation bunting was a really lively, happy addition to our front room. It was a lovely thing to do over the holidays. Really chilled out. We put some music on while we were painting, and it was a lovely, no pressure activity for a rainy afternoon.

The level of independence you would give your child would depend on their age and things like their scissor skills. To be honest with my two being now 7 and nearly 10 I would be happy with them doing the whole thing on their own next time, with supervision more for the youngest when she was using the scissors. But this is something that you can tailor to their age and skill level. My two thoroughly enjoyed just painting the cardboard shapes as a stand alone activity.

I think if we did this again we would try something a little more complicated. Maybe theme the shapes we made to different types of clef, different musical instruments, oooh maybe themed around a family of instruments, that might be fun. If we really want to challenge ourselves one day, maybe we could have a go at using felt to make our bunting! I’m not sure we’re quite ready for that yet, I’ll stick to the cardboard for now.

If you have a go I would love to know what you made, leave a comment below to let me know how you and your children got on.

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