Forums

The lessons for the Kindergartens were centered around the 5 senses to help them for the Scientific Method step of observation. In a lesson, we covered the sense of hearing. In the beginning of the lesson, we talked about what we use our ears for. The students closed their eyes then I made a sound with an object and they had to guess what made the sound. Most of the students were able to identify the correct object. The second part of the lesson we talked about how object makes sounds that are soft, medium, and loud. We used musical instruments such as the cymbals, blocks to hit together. Other instruments were the drums,tambourine, maracas, and another Mexican instrument to make various levels of sound.The students had a blast using the instruments to make "music".

Hi Amy,
Those activities all sound great. You might enjoy reading this article by Peggy Ashbrook, too: The Early Years:Hear That?
Peggy provides a lesson plan on making a kazoo.
Carolyn

Those sound like really fun activities! Thank you for sharing!

Sounds fun! Thanks for sharing!

There is another game where students can determine where sound is coming from and discuss how they determined it. Students can sit in a circle and close their eyes. A student will clap towards a student next to them. The receiving student must clap back to him or clap to the next student. After the game, the teacher can ask students how they knew when someone was clapping towards them. If there are any mix ups, the teacher can ask students if they have any solutions to make it easier to know where the clapping came from (i. e. a consistent, medium clap).

This sounds like a fun and engaging lesson! Thank you for sharing!

To elaborate on the sound objects that were played in the classroom, you can have students create their own guitar and hear the sound that it makes, they can either tell if the sound is soft, medium or high, and what they can do to make it sound louder, maybe change the rubber band to a thicker one, or add more strings. They can decorate their guitar and take it home to share with parents.

Hi Amy, Your ideas sound like a great lesson, especially for kindergarten students, as they tend to want more hands-on activities. Thank you so much for sharing your lesson idea! I especially like how you extended on the lesson by having the students later make music using various levels of sound!