Music Shakers Craft For Kids (Homemade Maracas)

You and your toddler will love making this pumpkin themed fall craft for homemade shakers! It’s still pretty hot in many parts of the country. However, that hasn’t prevented us from pulling out our pumpkins, Fall leaves, and other fall decorations to celebrate this time of the year. Get your toddler excited about Fall with this fun pumpkin musical shakers craft. There is counting involved, color recognition and even a scavenger hunt can be included in this crafting fun. So enjoy this fall craft for kids and make some pumpkin music shakers! They are make a great instrument with a distinctive sound for keeping the rhythm. These musical instruments can also be called egg shakers or homemade maracas.

Musical Shakers Percussion Instrument Tutorial With Fun Pumpkin Theme

This shaker music instrument is so easy to make. This versatile percussion instrument is perfect for preschool kids to do with adult supervision. It is a great way to work on fine motor skills. Or younger toddlers may want to just watch you make them and then enjoy playing with the music shakers when they are done!

Craft Supplies Needed To Make Music Shakers:

• Orange Easter Eggs
• Green Paper Plate or Green Construction Paper
• Rice (small pebbles or dry beans will work as well)
• Twigs
• Glue (Even better would be orange duct tape)
• Scissors

Before You Begin, Read This Safety Tip:

Consider the age of your child. If they are under 3 years of age, or they still like putting things in their mouth, then you will want to go ahead and skip the cute pumpkin stem and leaf and just stick to the orange plastic egg as the pumpkin. You will also want to skip the glue and use duct tape instead since it is less likely to allow the egg to spilt open and spill or become a choking hazard. Homemade shakers should only be made and played with under adult supervision to make sure kids are using them in a safe way.

How To Make Musical Shakers For Kids

First, head outside and let your child find a few twigs. These will be used as the pumpkin stem so thin twigs would be best. Once your child has found a few twigs, gather up your supplies inside and head to the table.

Parents, carefully punch a small hole in the top of your Easter eggs with the scissors or an ice pick. We always have random bags of Easter Eggs put up from previous years of egg hunts. Therefore, grabbing some orange eggs wasn’t a problem. 

Once the hole is made, help your child break a small piece of the twig off and put through the hole on top. If it’s a little loose, you can place a drop of glue on the twig and then let dry (or wrap with orange duct tape).

Once the twig is in place, cut a small strip from your green paper plate. This will be the pumpkin leaf so squeeze it in the hole beside your twig!

Once those two steps are finished, grab some rice and fill the bottom half of the Easter egg.

Before closing your egg, place a small strip of glue around the edge.

Close your egg and let the glue dry before handing off individual shakers to young children. This will help keep the egg from popping open. The last thing you want is for rice to go flying everywhere! On this note, orange duct tape will work even better to keep your rice shaker shut and prevent it from opening and spilling rice.

Shaker Games for Kids

Here are some fun music shaker games you can play with kids to build rhythm, listening skills, and creativity. These work with homemade shakers (like rice or beans in sealed containers) or store-bought ones:

1. Shake & Freeze

• Play music and have kids shake their shakers.
• When the music stops, everyone freezes in place with their shaker still.
• Add simple activity challenges like “freeze in a funny pose” or “freeze with shaker above your head.”

2. Copy the Leader

• One child (or adult) shakes in a rhythm or pattern (up high, down low, side to side).
• Everyone else copies the shaker sound pattern.
• Take turns being the leader.

3. Slow & Fast

• Call out or play music with different tempos.
• Kids shake slowly with slow songs, and super-fast with fast songs.
• Great for teaching beginning music concepts like tempo and control.

4. Pass the Shake

• Sit in a circle.
• One child shakes a rhythm and passes it to the next person.
• The rhythm goes around the circle like a musical “telephone.”

5. Shaker Storytime

• Read a short story and let kids shake when they hear a certain word (like “dog” or “happy”).
• This simple listening game builds listening and engagement.

Conclusion

Music shakers, also known as percussion shakers or simply shakers, are handheld instruments that produce rhythmic sounds when shaken. Toddlers love making these egg-shaped instruments and shaking them to make noise! Something that might be fun to do is fill your eggs with several different types of materials (like beans, pebbles, and pennies) so that they all make different sounds when shaking. These pumpkin music shakers would be great to play with after a fall snack like soft pumpkin chocolate chip cookies!

This is such a fun and easy music shaker craft to do with your little one. I also love that the finished rice shakers seem to be a big hit to play with day after day. Do you think you will craft these simple homemade shakers and enjoy with their rhythmic texture with your kids?

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