We love doing craft activities especially around Halloween time to get into the holiday spirit! And many times the kids will play with their creations or even evolve their work into new and interesting pieces, but most of the time it just ends up sitting on a shelf or bench until the Halloween crafts get replaced by the Christmas ones and placed into the bin.
To make Halloween Craft Dance and Move you need Bluetooth speakers, a cereal box, or similar and your Halloween craft creations.
For ideas, instructions, and tutorials on a variety of Halloween crafts that are light enough to move and dance on your cereal box dance floor click here.
Step By Step Instructions on How to Make your Halloween Dance Floor.
Materials Needed:
- Large Cereal Box
(mine measured L x W x H – 32.5cm x 24cm x 9cm OR 12.75″ x 9.5″ x 3.5″) - Spray Paint in Black
- 2 x Bluetooth Cylinder Speakers
- Device to store/stream music from and to control Bluetooth speakers such as a tablet or phone.
- Halloween Craft (click here for ideas and instructions)
Instructions:
Step 1:
Prepare your cereal box. Make sure it is clean and that there are no tears or rips on the side you want to use as the dance floor otherwise choose a different box – repairing with tape will make the dance floor area heavier in the spot where the tape is and more likely to absorb or repel soundwaves than let it pass through. Your box should have one sealed end and one open end. I like finding a box that has a tab seal (it has a slit on one side and a tab on the other that you insert the tab into the slit to close the box) so I can easily close it when doing the project – well one that isn’t ripped which is sometimes hard when your kids are the ones usually opening the cereal boxes!
Step 2:
Paint your cereal box. Do one side and then let that dry before turning over and doing the other side and letting that dry.
You could keep this as it is, but the graphics on the box can become a distraction. I chose to spray paint my box rather than make this an activity to do with my kids to ensure the dance floor stayed smooth without brush marks and so I could apply a light even coverage, allowing the cardboard to stay thin and flexible so the soundwaves could still pass through it effectively.
Step 3:
Turn on your Bluetooth speakers and connect them to your music streaming device or library. Ensure they are working well and charged by playing a song and turning the volume up and down and pausing and playing.
Step 4:
Place one Bluetooth speaker at the very far end of the box. Place the other near the opening. Close your box if you can otherwise, it will still work if you can’t.
Step 5:
Carefully place your light Halloween craft towards the middle of the dancefloor.
Step 6:
Making sure the volume is on full, press play on a song that you know has a lot of base or that you have felt vibrations from when near a speaker and watch your Halloween craft vibrate and dance around the dance floor. Just look out for those ones that can’t seem to stay on there and fall off!!!
Step 7:
Dance with your Halloween craft!
How do we hear sound?:
We hear sound through soundwaves. When a noise is made like when guitar strings are strummed they create vibrations. But not only do the strings vibrate, so does the air around them.
All sounds make these vibrations, even our voices and we call the vibrations soundwaves because if we could see them we would describe them as looking like travelling waves. Quite noises make small soundwaves and loud noises make big soundwaves or vibrations.
When the sound waves travel to our ear and they hit out ear drums, bones behind the eardrum amplify the sound – the waves eventually reach the auditory nerve that carries the message to the brain that some soundwaves have been felt and our brain turns the waves into sounds that we recognize and understand.
How does sound make our Halloween Craft Dance and Move?
Soundwaves travel from the object they were made from all around until they hit various objects and surfaces. Some surfaces rebound the sound, like when we hear an echo and others absorb the sound, and others allow it to travel through it.
The cardboard cereal box we use in this experiment, allows sound to travel through it. This means the soundwaves are actually travelling through the box – and we know this because we can feel them if you were to touch the box and because you can still hear the sound, even though it might be a little muffled or less loud.
The soundwaves cause the surface of the box to vibrate and when those vibrations are big enough they can cause whatever is on the surface of the box to tremble and vibrate as well!
Trouble Shooting:
In the video, you will see a total fail at the beginning when my Ghosts did not move. I have done this experiment before with paper dinosaur finger puppets that I made with my kids – lookout for that tutorial soon – and the first-ever material I got really moving on that dance floor was aluminum foil! So I knew it should work and had gotten the silver ghosts really moving and dancing on a previous day.
But basically, when I tried the activity whilst filming with my kids for the video tutorial, my ghosts were not moving because the soundwaves were not big enough meaning the volume was not loud enough, even though I had turned the volume up to full on my phone.
The difference was this time, I was using a streaming service to play the songs as I had made playlists for you the reader to be able to use especially as the song that works best is one that I license to use in my videos through Soundstripe.com (affiliate link) and isn’t normally available to everyone. The artist of that song Ryhtm Scott has released a few albums on several streaming services and I was excited to find that Boomwhackers – the song that creates great soundwaves and vibrations was available there for you to stream as well. So instead of my apple music app, I usually use on my phone I was using the streaming service whilst making the video.
But what I found is that for some reason I am able to get a lot more volume from the song when playing it as saved in my music library than what I can from a streaming service. There could be many reasons for this – one of which might be as I downloaded a license to use the song the version I downloaded may have a greater range and frequency compared to the version the artist uploaded to the streaming services. But whatever it is, this may cause you some problems too, or you may encounter different ones and so the following are some tips to check in case you run into problems too!
1.Volume
As you can see and hear in the video although there is not a lot of difference from when the activity worked and didn’t in the sound, getting the volume right can mean your kids are either going to be wowed and saying ‘look at them move’ or instead saying ‘this isn’t working’ or the dreaded ‘I’m bored’.
The technology you use to do this activity will probably be different to mine, from the brand of the speakers (mine were from Aldi) to their power and amplification abilities, to the streaming service or music app you use and more. You may need to experiment with what you have to make it work. But if you do decide to purchase some new equipment make sure you check out my recommendations written about previously in this article here.
You can however make a positive out of it if it doesn’t work especially if you watch the video with your kids and show them it can work. The positive is turning it into a learning activity and experimenting with different speakers, different songs, and different music apps and streaming services, and then discussing what worked and what didn’t.
2.Song Choice
Not all songs have enough base in them to create big vibrations. Boomwhackers, the song by Rhythm Scott that I use in the video and that you can stream through my playlists, has a lot of base and echo in it creating really wonderful vibrations that will get your Halloween craft moving. There are a few other songs I would recommend as well – many Black Eyed Peas or Will.i.am songs seem to have great base and many are appropriate for kids and you will find them on the playlists.
3. Materials & Equipment
DANCE FLOOR BOX
Whatever type of box you choose to make your dance floor with, it needs to be sturdy but also thin and flexible. The walls of the box need to allow the soundwaves and vibrations from the speakers to move through them. A thick cardboard or wood box will absorb alot of the vibrations and the objects ontop will not move because of this.
I have found cereal boxes to be great for this purpose and most people have them in their homes – so it is a great repurposing activity as well!
HALLOWEEN CRAFT
Your craft needs to be lightweight. Heavy and thick objects will absorb the vibrations and will not move. A great activity is to use objects of various weight and predict to see if they will or wont move with your kids.
BLUETOOTH SPEAKERS
Your speakers are probably the most important aspect of this whole project and activity. Your speakers need to be powerful enough to amplify the sound at a high volume – high enough to create substantial vibrations through a cereal box. If the experiment is not working it could be that your speakers are not up to the task.
Secondly, I know a lot of people have circular speakers rather than long cylinder-shaped ones like I used in my experiment. As I have not tried circular ones, I am not sure how effective they would be in this project, but if you try them and it works, make sure you tag me on social @movedancelearn to show me your results!
4. Set Up
Sometimes my speakers roll together inside the box and the objects on top don’t move as noticeably and effectively because of this. You need to make sure that you have your speakers at either end of your box. This will help to create soundwaves and vibrations evenly across the surface of your dance floor. Make sure to place your objects in between the two speakers so they received maximum vibrations and you get to see a lot of movement.
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