Invitation to Create: Cinco de Mayo Maracas

 

Homemade Maracas for Cinco de Mayo

Finding ways to upcycle recyclables around the house is always a bonus in our crafting at home. For this Cinco de Mayo homemade maraca craft, we grabbed a few rolls from our toilet paper tube stash.

The toilet paper rolls serve as the maracas, and lentils, corn and rice and wooden beads are options for kids to use as the filler.

Typically when setting up an invitation to create, I place materials on the table and show the kids an inspiration for their craft (or not) and let them get to work, creating their own interpretation and showcasing their creativity.

This invitation to create needed just a bit of guidance at the end to secure the contents inside the maraca. This avoided any frustration with contents flying everywhere when shaking the maraca.

Aside from the help securing the maraca, children can have full creative control over what they place inside their maraca, and the decoration on the exterior.

I also added to the tray some rubber bands, tape and a glue stick so that he could close up the ends himself once I had actually secured them pretty well. We used Do-a-Dot markers for decoration as well as tissue paper squares. 

We just used tissue paper with tape over it to keep the ends covered and it was actually pretty sturdy.

Mack enjoyed mixing all of the ‘ingredients’ together before adding them to his shaker. And what 3 year old doesn’t enjoy scooping and dumping?!

After making a couple, Mack was able to tell them difference in how they all sounded, we discussed the different sounds they made when they were more or less full.

He loves tape, so by the time he was done with his maracas it was pretty much covered in tape, great for shaking! 

Once he was done making his maracas he went on to make rice, lentil and corn soup with tissue paper tomatoes. I adore his creativity. 

Have so much fun making your Cinco de Mayo homemade maracas!