Learning about sound

We are learning about how sounds are made and how they travel to the ear.

We are learning all about how our ears look and how they work.

We can make funny sounds with balloons, grass and plastic.

There’s lots more to learn about sounds.

We were able to identify different items just by the sounds they make and we could sort our musical instruments according to sound words.

We discovered that different sized elastic bands made different sounds.  Large elastic bands make a low sound when plucked, long straws and instruments make low sounds while short straws and instruments make high sounds.

We were able to make spoons sound like bells by getting their sound to travel up along a piece of string and into our ears.  This was very surprising.

We found that small spoons make high sounds while large spoons make very low sounds.

We also used string telephones.  we could see how sounds can travel up the string and get amplified in the yoghurt pots.  We could even make conference calls by crossing one set of string telephones over another.

We had a lot of fun watching the vibrations from a tuning fork transferring to plastic dishes and on to the the rice and peas in the dishes.  Watching the vibrations in water and in a ping pong ball was especially interesting.