Make Homemade Castanets

Most kids love musical instruments, and there's no reason to spend money buying them. You can whip up these castanets and kick up your heels in a flamenco dance in a matter of minutes.

What You Need:

• Cardboard
• Safety scissors
• 4 bottle caps
• A hammer
• Superglue
• Glitter, markers, and other decorations

What You Do:

1. Parents: being careful to keep your child's fingers out of your workspace, flatten the bottle caps with a hammer.
2. Draw two wide strips with rounded edges onto the cardboard and allow your child to cut them out, using the safety scissors. Fold each in half, so they look like duck bills.
3. Put a dab of glue on the jagged edge (the bottom) of each bottle cap. Glue one to the top and one to the bottom of the inside of each piece of cardboard, so the bottle caps meet when you close the cardboard “duck bills.” This is a job for adults only.
4. When the glue is thoroughly dry, let your child decorate them with markers, glitter, or whatever else he fancies. Once they're dry again, hand your child the castanets and show him how to press the upper and lower cardboard together so the bottle caps meet and click. He'll have one for each hand. Ole!