Last week, I posted on my cunning plan to add boomwhackers to two of my samba groups to allow for larger classes of around 40 children.

I had some time to spare, and occupied myself with working out how to provide enough activity for a group of 8 children armed with boomwhackers in a samba group, assuming that you have two complete sets of boomwhackers at your disposal. Here is what I have come up with.

Each child holds two boomwhackers to tap together. I will line the children up in the order in which they have to play. Chopsticks should be quite straightforward:

Chopsticks

Once the children are reliably keeping a steady pulse, I will encourage them to invent their own one-bar rhythms. If you number the players 1 2 3 4, then the basic pattern is 1   1   2   2   3   3   4   4

Miss Mary Mack (slightly adapted)

(traditional song with three or four verses). This will be a little trickier to get right. If you number the player 1 2 3 4, then they have to go in the order of 1 2 3 4 1   1   1 2 3 4 1   1   etc.

 That should do for starters!