As part of a 'carnival' themed creative arts week we made our own musical instruments. We based them on sounds from Samba. The children needed to bring in recyclable materials in order to make them and it took a full day! However, the results were excellent!

I used this for a music lesson, play the slide (the boat moves after about 5secs). assign groups different sections (eg pyramids, pharaoh etc) they compose a piece of music for that section and as the boat passes each group plays in turn, fading in and fading out.