GUITARRACA by Mateo Bur. For the English class all the students were told to make a musical instrument with household materials. I decided to make a new kind of instrument that mixed together 2 different ones: a guitar and a maraca. This is how I came up with my ideas of the Guitarraca. I called it Guitarraca because it has strings like a guitar and beans inside that sound like a maraca. This instrument is a hybrid because it belongs to the string family and also to the percussion one. It makes both string and percussion sounds when it is played. In order to make it I used balsa wood, rubber bands, beans, watercolors, foam, pipe cleaners, picture hangers, a soda can, nails, glue and a golden ribbon.     To make my project, first I picked up some balsa wood, my mum cut it into the shape I wanted for the instrument. Then my stepfather smashed a soda can till I had the size I needed, and placed it on the wood. I put some beans inside the can for the percussion part of the instrument. Then my mum cut some little pieces of wood to put the rubber bands and tightened them in order for the sound to be produced. The wood was weak, so my stepfather came up with the idea to add the picture hangers behind the elastic bands, this would also protect the wood from breaking with the pressure of the elastic bands. All the parts were placed in the long piece of wood and secured with adhesive tape. It was important to put a lot of tape in some parts to make it resistant. Once it was ready I sat down with my mom to decorate it. She is very creative and gave me a lot of cool ideas. We placed the foam on both sides of the can; this also helped the rubber bands to sound a little stronger. Then I painted all with watercolors. Since the can was red, I decided to paint all red and yellow. The final touches came with some pipe cleaners used to decorate the top of the instrument, and a golden ribbon as a neck hanger. This was a funny project, my family had fun helping me with it.