Boom!

Behold! The Wall of Whackers!

Boomwhackers are great for the elementary music classroom, but they are such a pain to store.  For the past six years I have kept my large Boomwhackers in laundry baskets and my smaller ones in buckets.  It looked messy and was hard to find the tubes I needed.  I just moved to a new classroom with a very long, empty wall.  I knew I wanted to use the large space for a word wall (which as you can see is still on the to-do list,) but then I found this....

The original inspiration for my wall.

This picture (above) was the inspiration for my Wall of Whackers.  How simple!  What a great idea!  I had searched all over the internet for Boomwhacker storage ideas, and this was the only picture I found that really got me excited to try something new!

After figuring out how much space this whole thing would take, I ordered 14 feet of 1-inch bulletin board strip through my school. The maintenance crew installed the bulletin board strip. I used long strips of self-adhesive Velcro (prickly side) on the bulletin board, and put short, 2-inch strips (fuzzy side) on each Boomwhacker. It took about an hour of my time to complete.

The pitches are much easier to find now, and are very easy to grab! The tubes also give me an easy visual/auditory reference to show students that large instruments make low pitches and small instruments make high pitches. They also provide some much needed color to my new classroom! I plan on using the remaining top half of the wall for a word wall or musical timeline. The black things on the top of some of the tubes are the Octavator caps. I would love to get enough caps to put on each tube! I also have another few feet of space to put more Boomwhackers!

Because I use this blog to share interactive resources, I thought I would share a useful (and free) Boomwhacker program called "Boom."

Boom is a program (yes, you have to download it) by The Music Interactive that you can have students use on individual computers, but I recommend using it on an interactive whiteboard.  You can drag and drop virtual Boomwhackers into melodic patterns or chords.  It also has a writing space at the top of the page where you can write rhythmic notation or anything else you may need.  The beauty of this program is that you can use it in whatever way works best for you.  You can click here for the link, but will need to scroll down a bit to find the program.  Make sure you check out some of their other great music programs, too!