Spirit Lake 6th-graders create musical instruments
Singing shows might be a hit on TV, but Dave Jones wasn’t having any luck getting his sixth-grade music students enthused about exercising their vocal cords.
The school’s annual musicals were something the older kids at Athol and Spirit Lake elementaries considered uncool.
“Singing was getting to be a negative experience,” Jones said. “I had to fight and struggle to get kids to participate. It was like pulling teeth.”
Instead of singing this spring, Jones’ sixth-grade students will use drums, rainsticks, glockenspiels – even a banjo and oboe they built themselves – in a performance for their families.
The concert will feature music the students are composing in class.
Tyler Winkowitsch used a plastic plumping pipe and two empty water bottles to make a rainstick. Other students put beans inside theirs to reproduce the sound of trickling rain.
“I made mine a little different so it’s louder,” Tyler said. “There’s a lot of nails in there.”
Making his own instrument was “better than doing music work,” Tyler said. “It’s fun, too.”
Jones is grading students based on the physical appearance of the instruments and how well they play, historical knowledge of the instruments and a presentation each student is required to give about their instrument.
The Spirit Lake Elementary Parent Teacher Organization and Spokane’s Olympic Boat Center donated funds or supplies for the project.
As students put finishing touches on their instruments last week, Jones helped Austin Wells with the design of his banjo – crafted from a cardboard concrete form tube, duct tape and wood. Fishing line was used for the strings.
Jordyn Kronenberg and Preston Rhodes used permanent markers to color metal pipes on their glockenspiels.
“You cut metal pipes to certain lengths and put them together in a certain way,” Jordyn said. “It’s like a xylophone except there are tubes instead of bars.”
Music is made by striking the pipes.
“We haven’t figured out what we’re going to hit them with yet,” Preston said.