Inspired Adventures: Water Xylophone Discovery Station

I find myself giving my classroom a lot more attention these days. There is something about the midyear mark of a school year that makes me get ants in my pants. Basically, I crave change and making things fresh and new. I find that even little things can keep me excited and inspired in what I'm doing and I think the same goes for my students. So, I plan to share some recent changes that I've made to my classroom here and there. I'm not quite ready for a big reveal as there are still some tweaks I want to make. Right now, I will focus on our new Discovery Station. This station changes frequently throughout the year to reflect different things we are studying or exploring. I've shared this space a couple of times in previous posts.

Here, it is at the beginning of the year completely untouched...

And, here it is a few weeks later filled with nature items that my students brought in.

These days, our station is not only sporting a whole new concept; it is sporting a whole new look. I traded out the pentagon table for this bench that used to hang out in our meeting area. As you can see from the "before" picture below, I used to have a black bookshelf across from the station. It held all of our non-fiction books. Well, I put that shelf somewhere else and put the books under the bench. I love how instantly it opened up the space and made the books more visible. The students are exploring those baskets like it is nobody's business now!

Now on to our latest exploration. Once again, I owe all of the credit for this fun activity to my friend and "neighbor" Ashley. It's so nice to have somebody right next door to share and swap ideas. She is always up to something super cool and I get to share in the wealth. Lucky me!

We are studying sound right now and using a water xylophone to create songs. These are simple mason jars filled with colored water at varying levels. The students use the little metal wand to tap each jar to make music.

To help them channel their inner-Mozart, they use this sheet to compose their own songs. They color in the circles with the color that corresponds with the jar to be played. They are having a blast coming up with different ways to make music. There is space on the back of these sheet, also, for them to compose up to eight songs.