Easy way to organize and display your instrument table.

A sure-fire way to keep your students playing instruments is to have the instruments out in the room.  When it comes to unpitched instruments, there are so many of them and you don’t want them all heaped in one or two buckets. I like to display one of each on a table with the extras in side bins. I organize them by families: shakers/scrapers, woods, metal, and drum. I also have family instrument signs mounted on the wall behind them.

To organize them in a somewhat orderly fashion, I place all the instruments on a paper-lined table and then outline them in pencil. Then I take them all off and draw with puffy paint over the tracings. I like to use one color for each family. The paint takes a few days to dry completely. Then I place each instrument in its new outline.

I quickly found out that some students take it upon themselves to make sure each instrument is properly in its place and will “fix” any that aren’t.  Also, if any instruments were removed but not replaced, one quick look tells me which it is and a search begins.  The drama teacher that uses my classroom after school told me that prop tables are set up the same way.

If you want a visual demonstration of my unpitched instrument table, be sure to watch this video. As always, I would love to hear what you do in your classroom. Until next time,