Hearing is the sense that detects and processes sound information.
Activity: Let’s Go for a Sound Walk
Concepts:
- Different objects and things make different sounds
- Sounds can vary in loudness (loud, soft) and in pitch (high, low)
- Sounds come from a source, and a sound can often be tracked to its location
Materials: (optional)
- Audio recorder to record the sounds (e.g., cell phone)
- Print format to write list of sounds (e.g., parent writes down objects that made sounds)
Directions:
Tell your child that you are going outside to listen to sounds in the outdoors
- Before heading outdoors, brainstorm/predict together what sounds you might hear
- At first, stand still outside for a few minutes and listen to sounds. Make a list of those identified
- Try to repeat or imitate the sounds together
- Guess what is making the sounds- by object name or by category (e.g., dog bark-animal; car, bus, airplane-vehicle with engine; rain, wind-weather, footsteps on path-body)
- Try to guess/point to the direction of the sound source- (e.g., above head- bird in tree, airplane)
- Then go for a short walk and listen to the sounds. Can you follow a sound to its source? What happens to a sound as you walk-does it get louder or quieter? What additional sounds do you hear?
Reflect and Share:
Do this once back inside your home or save for another day
- Review the list of predicted sounds with the list of those heard. Were some of them the same? Listen to and review the sounds you recorded. Can you name the objects by just hearing them?
- Sometimes you could see they things that made sounds and other times you could not see the sound sources. Where did some of the sounds come from? How did you figure out the sound even if you could not see the sound source?