The Instrumental Petting Zoo

What’s an Instrumental Petting Zoo?

An Instrumental Petting Zoo is an event where invited guests get to try out the different instruments of the band and/or orchestra. The “guests” include your target students for beginning band and their families/parents/legal guardians. This is not an instrument demo – although that can be a part of the event. This is more like an open house, with instruments organized by families – brass, woodwinds, strings & percussion – and guests have free reign to browse this “instrument zoo” and are allowed to try out the instruments at each station.

Organizing this event can be a huge undertaking, but hopefully this article will walk you through the steps and warn you of potential pitfalls. You can also purchase my Instrumental Petting Zoo Kit on my Teachers-Pay-Teachers store. The kit includes the signs, posters and decorations seen in the photos below as well as the flyers and posters needed to advertise and market your event to the students and families.

Planning for the Event

Holding a successful event is ALL ABOUT THE PLANNING! Before getting started you need to iron out these details with your admin and team mates:

• ALONE OR WITH A TEAM? Will you hold this event by yourself or team up with other teachers. I’ve done this event by myself and its a crazy night! If you go it alone you’ll need help from older band members to help demonstrate the instruments. It’s easier to team up with other teachers – at least one for each instrument family. If your district has multiple schools you could even have one event for all schools!
• INSTRUMENTS? – do you have the instruments? I am very lucky that my school owns almost all of the instruments that students can rent from our dealer on hand. If you need instruments you can team up with other schools or talk to your rental company. Many companies may be willing to bring instruments. Our dealer sends a representative to help answer parent questions. Also consider which instruments you want to offer – some schools only start flute & clarinet for the woodwinds, some don’t allow percussion until after one year on another instrument – you decide what works best for you!
• THE DATE & TIME? – I recruit in the spring with students that start in the fall of the following school year, this allows our rental company time to get the rentals ready and it allows me to get my school instruments ready. I also run this event twice on two separate evenings – different families attend each night – this makes it more accessible to busy parents!
• THE SPACE – I run my event in my band room, bu I am fortunate to have a very large space. You could also run this event in a multi-purpose room, a school cafeteria or a gymnasium.

Once these details are set, you can start planning and preparing for the event itself. You’ll need to contact and inform families a few weeks in advance – remember you are not only recruiting the students – you’re recruiting their families, parents and/or guardians! Get the word out to all parents and guardians about the opportunity to join band/orchestra and make sure they know and understand how it will help their children grow! It’s time to flex your arts advocacy muscles and get the word out!

Use Online Resources!

BePartoftheMusic.com is a great resource for music ed. advocacy and for help with recruiting new students. The website started out as “Be-part-of-the-band” but quickly expanded to include orchestra. They now also have resources to help teacher retain students as they transition to middle and high school.

The “go-to” resources here are the videos. They introduce kids to instrumental music and are hosted by KIDS. They’re funny and get to the heart of the matter. I show these videos a few weeks before my Petting Zoo event to all of the 3rd and 4th grade music classes. For teachers who are fortunate to teach only instrumental music – see if you can make time and arrange to take over your general music teacher’s 3rd and 4th grade classes for a week. Meet the students, show the videos and run short Q&A where you can also let them know about the petting zoo. After the video class I send home flyers and begin posting about the event on my band’s and school’s social media sites. I also use our school’s “digital backpack” to make my flyer and informational/intro letters available to parents online.

Use your Concert!

I always hold my petting zoo a few weeks after my spring concert. I have my 3rd graders perform on their recorders in the concert at the very end. Parents get to see and hear our choirs and bands and I speak to all of the parents about the importance of being in band and the benefits of playing an instrument. I also apologize for the months of recorder practice in their house – this always gets a laugh – but the parents love seeing their kids perform! I place an ad for the Petting Zoo with the date in the program – right next to the page with all of the 3rd grade students names!

Keeping the Guests and “Animals” Safe!

Keeping the instrument safe is fairly easy – you simply need some help. When running this event alone I use upper grade students to run each instrument station. The percussion and string instruments are fairly simple since they require no disinfecting between guests. Just be sure that guests and “animal trainers” know that instrument try-outs are done one guest at a time.

The brass and woodwinds are a bit more complicated because they need to be cleaned in between each use. Ideally it’s best to have a teacher at this post who can help one students try the different instruments, then quickly sanitize the mouthpiece before moving to the next student. Having two sets of mouthpieces for each instrument is important. After sanitizing one you can let it sit and dry while using the second mouthpiece. Be careful and get a music instrument disinfectant that’s safe to ingest. There are not many out there – most of the sprays can be harmful if ingested. Woodwind instruments have the additional issue of the reed. I’ve read that some teachers use plastic reeds for this type of event and clean the reed and mouthpiece in between each use. I’ve never tried this but I may in the future. I’ve always had the sax and clarinet as “holding only” instruments. The students can hold them but not play them. The teacher demonstrates the sound for the students, but they do not get to try and make a sound themselves.

More Ideas & Resources

I hope this article helps teachers in setting up their own petting zoo. Listed below are additional resources and ideas I found from around the web that were helpful to me.

• Check your local arts institutions and professional ensembles. They sometimes run similar events that would make perfect class trips!
• The Make Moments Matter blog has its own idea for an instrument petting zoo that can be held on parent conference day. This is geared more as a general music event but has some great ideas and photos.
• The California Symphony has some great photos and ideas that they use in their own petting zoo.
• If you have the resources and inclination, you could hire a company like Skyline Music to run the event for you!
• Purchase and download my Petting Zoo Kit from my Teachers-Pay-Teachers Store! It’s a great kit and includes access to online resources that I’ll be adding to in the future!

Post COVID Updates!

Update 2022! Since being closed for almost two full years in my district, I have not yet held another Petting Zoo event, but I do plan on bringing it back this year! My Petting Zoo resources on Teachers-pay-Teachers is still my top seller, so I know teachers are returning to these kinds of events, and I know they can be done safely!

I’ll e posting a new “post-COVID” update in the spring of 2023 as I prepare to host my own Petting Zoo event!