kids drum workshop

Hello there,
This is my first post here. Very brief about myself: 44 years old, living in the Netherlands, electronic engineer, married, father of two girls. Currently amateur drummer, playing for about 30 years on and off, occasionally in rock bars in the past, not anymore. Mostly rock, soul, blues, jazz. Apart from drums, percussion, a bit of trumpet, ney flute.

Here is my question:
For my older daughter's 8th birthday party, I promised her to make a drum workshop (at home) for her friends. 6-8 girls all about 8 years old.

What I have: 1 drum kit, 4 darbukas (dumbek), 2 bendirs (big frame drum), 1 talking drum, 1 bongo, indian tabla, several shaker, and of course many sticks brushes etc. + Wii karaoke kit

What I want: using these, letting the kids have lots of fun and learn something about drums. Absolutely no intention of making money/finding students etc. Just for my daughters birthday party.

I already have some ideas but I would greatly appreciate any new ideas from you, especially if you have already done a similar thing with kids. That will be my first experience.

Thanks in advance for any ideas.

Cem
 
I got roped in to participating (not leading!) in a drum workshop at a kid's party a few years ago. This was using Brazilian percussion instruments (some of which were indeed drums), but you could use the same sort of ideas with what you are doing.

1. Explain the idea that if you can count to four...you're a drummer!
2. Come up with beats for the instruments at your disposal, and split the kids among the instruments.
3. On '1' you guys hit your instruments, on '2' you different guys hit your instruments and so on.
4. If you're brave, add some 1/8th beats (or you could add them between the 1/4's)
5. Encourage the kids to come up with their own ideas...could be fun or could be utter mayhem...which could also be fun.
 
I'm a drum instructor and a number of my students are around your daughter's age range 6-9, keeping kids that young focused on what you're trying to teach them for longer than 5 minutes CAN be very challenging.

With my more difficult students when I can tell that they're getting frustrated we'll do 30 seconds to a minute of just making noise and pounding away which SOMETIMES gets them back on track.

Good luck!
 
Focus on a musical experience.

Don't be afraid to make things even simpler than you planned as long as it works.

If someone doesn't feel pulse at all, group them with someone who's solid. These things are easy to fix, but not in this format for one fun time only.

The feeling of mastering and taking part is the important thing.

Think more fun and varied sounds than more complex rhythms.
 
Thank you very much for your valuable inputs.

I will try my best. One advantage I have is that most of them, including my daughter, already play an instrument; piano, violin, flute. So they are not completely unaware of what playing music is like.

- I will first show them the drum-set. Maybe give the drums cymbals some names... hmm nice idea, they are all classmates, it could be their head-teachers name, hitting him could be fun for some of them :))

- Then, thanks to your suggestions, I will group the kids and first we will start counting 1-2-3-4 together, then maybe hitting the darbukas together. Then I will start playing a simple rhythm on the drums set, one group plays the 1s, the other 2s, etc.

If it doesn't work, I will turn on something like "Queen-We Will Rock You" for playing along, which could push them a bit. Or something like "Frozen" theme songs, Roar by Katie Perry, etc.

If still no hope, I could somehow involve the Wii Karaoke kit (have to think about how).

Still no hope -> we put the drums aside and start dancing :)

I will let you know about the experience.
 
We did the workshop today. Very tiring but fun :) The musical/rhytmical part of it was not a big success (as expected) but the kids learned a lot nevertheless. We all had very good time at least :)

We started playing "We will rock you -Queen" which went quite ok. Then some funky stuff like "soul with a capital s - tower of power", "happy - p williams", etc. Even though it was difficult to keep steady beat all the time, I am sure they learnt (at least that it is possible) to feel the beat in a different way :)
Then they danced and I played...

Well, after all it was a very good experience, also thanks to some ideas I got from you guys.

PS: I would like to post some pictures, but I am not very familiar with how this forum works.
 
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