Hearing And Sound

On Friday we had guests from the Alberta Science Network come and teach us about Hearing and Sound. What a fantastic presentation!

Sound Experiment

February 3rd
We're having more fun experimenting with sound.  Today we were talking about how humans make sound.  We blew up a balloon, which once inflated acted as the lungs, and then we let the air pass through the top, which acted as the vocal cords vibrating.  This was a fun, and LOUD experiment!  Hopefully it will help the students remember the concepts!  Vibration = Sound!

Science Centers

February 5th

Today was sound centers day with all of the grade 3 classes.  The students spent the afternoon rotating through four hands-on sound centers.

Here are a few pictures of all of the fun learning!

Experiments included: Silly Salt Experiment,  Sound is Vibration! Can we see soundwaves?  Sound Vibrations will make the salt dance, Homemade drums, Straw flutes, Kazoos, Sound travels through many mediums.

Guitars ~ A Hearing and Sound Project

February 1st

Today we finished our guitars.  As part of the project students were expected to be able to demonstrate  how to change the pitch and volume  of their instrument.

Pitch is how HIGH or LOW a sound is.  Volume is how LOUD or QUIET a sound is. Students noticed that when they strum their guitar strings quickly the volume is loud, when they strum the strings slowly the volume is quiet.  When they tighten the strings the pitch is high and when they loosen the strings the pitch is low.

Here is a group picture of all of the guitars as well as a Google slides presentation of individual projects.

Enjoy!

Testing our Hearing and Caring for our Ears

March 4th

Today the students had a chance to do an experiment to test their ears.  The students worked in partners.  One partner wore a blindfold and the other partner held a rattle.  The partner with the rattle tested the blindfolded partner by shaking the rattle in various positions around the head.  The blindfolded partner tried to figure out exactly where the sound was coming from.  The blindfolded student also tried covering one ear at a time, or both ears, to find out if that made a difference to how they heard the sound.

Afterwards we debriefed and discussed whether they felt one ear was stronger than the other and if they experienced difficulty hearing when one or more of their ears was covered.

After the experiment we also talked about hearing loss, deafness and what we can do to care for our ears.

Here is a picture of a few of the students during the experiment.

Drummer Richard Cardinal

February 11th

This week we were very lucky to have a special presentation by First Nations Drummer, Richard Cardinal.   Richard performed three songs for us.  Richard sang in both English and Cree.  He also talked to us about his drums and answered questions about when he started singing and dancing. Richard's drum was made from Elk hide which we found fascinating. While Richard was visiting we learned how to do the Round Dance, and we danced to one of his songs.   This was a special afternoon for us, as one of our students participates as a "Grass Dancer" at traditional Round Dances and Pow Wows. It was fun for the rest of the class to experience a little piece of his culture. I loved watching how proud he was to share this with us.

This special afternoon was also a great tie in to our hearing and sound unit.  I heard many students using science terms such as vibration and vocal cords!

Here is a picture collage and a video.

Here is a short video clip.

Guitars!

February 6th.

Hearing and Sound

This week we were busy learning about pitch and volume.  The purpose of the guitar building activity was to give the students a hands-on learning opportunity.   They had to build their instrument and then use their guitar to demonstrate and explain to me the difference between volume and pitch.  I met with each student individually to watch and listen to their explanation.

Volume is how loud or soft a sound is.  Pitch is how high or low a sound is.  

Students discovered that when they strum their guitar quickly, the volume is loud.  When they strum their guitar slowly, the volume is quiet.  When they tighten the strings by holding their fingers down on them, the pitch is higher. When they loosen the strings by removing their fingers, then the pitch is lower.

They are all pretty proud of their work.  Check it out below!

Here are a few pictures of the guitar building in action.

Here's a group shot!  They're rockin' out!

And a slideshow!

Fun with Sound!

The Ear Drum & The Vocal Cords
January 30th

Last week in science we tried a couple more fun experiments to deepen our understanding of hearing and sound.

Dancing Salt ~ We were talking about the ear drum and the fact that sound waves travel down the ear canal and cause the ear drum to vibrate.  With our dancing salt experiment we tried to demonstrate what this might look like!  First we made an "ear drum". We secured a piece of wax paper with an elastic band over the top of a jar.  We placed salt on the wax paper.  Then we made sounds by beating a drum.  We saw that the sound waves caused the salt to vibrate and "dance" around.  Sound is energy. Any material that vibrates makes waves (sound waves).

Balloon Vocal Cords ~ With this experiment we were trying to demonstrate how your throat vibrates to make sounds.  Blow up a balloon (this is your lungs for the demonstration) pull the top of the balloon tight, and then let the air out.  As the air escapes, the neck of the balloon (this is your vocal cords for this demonstration) vibrates back and forth.  The result of this vibration is sound!   When air pushes past your vocal cords, they vibrate and make sounds. Your voice makes sounds when air causes the vocal cords to vibrate.

Hearing and Sound ~ Jam Session!

January 23rd
Hearing and Sound ~ Jam Session!

I invited M Campeau, the grade 4/5 French teacher at our school, and his class,  to come and visit our class on Friday.  M Campeau is a drummer and he came to share his expertise!  He had many exciting stories to share and facts to tell us that extended our learning and understanding of hearing and sound.  After a great discussion, M Campeau brought out all of his instruments to share with us, and we had a "jam" session.  It was so fun!

Here is a picture collage!

And here is a short video clip!  

Science Sound Centers

Hearing & Sound

Science Sound Centers Day!  January 22nd

We had such a great day on Thursday.  All four of the grade three classes spent the entire afternoon exploring many hands-on activities related to our study of hearing and sound.
Some of the stations included:

• Tin Can Telephones
• Kazoos
• "Guess That Sound" game
• Musical instruments and vibrating rice!
• Elastic Band/Shoe box "string" instruments

Here's a picture collage of some of the fun and great learning that took place!

A big Thank You to all of our parent volunteers for coming to help us with this. 

Vibration = Sound!

January 14th

Today we tried a few sound experiments!

We were investigating the fact that sound is made when things move.  The movement is  called vibration, and vibrations make sound!  When vibrations are small the sound is quiet.  When something makes a big vibration the sound is loud. We also discovered that the faster an object vibrates the higher the pitch is.  The sound waves are moving faster.  We noticed that the slower an object vibrates the lower the pitch is, the sound waves are moving more slowly.

Experiment #1 ~ Elastic Band test.
We placed an elastic band between our fingers.  We plucked the elastic band to make a sound.  We could see, feel, and hear the vibration!  We tried rubber bands of different widths to see if they would make a different sound.  They did!  We also tried wrapping the elastic bands around books, our chairs,  and pencil boxes and when we plucked them they made different sounds!   Some students put several elastics together and strummed them like a guitar!  Very cool!

Experiment #2 ~ Ruler test.
We placed a ruler over the edge our our desks.  We pushed down quickly on the ruler and watched it move up and down.  We tried different lengths sticking out over the edge and noticed that the ruler vibrated and made different sounds depending on how far over the desk the ruler was hanging.  The shorter the ruler was hanging over, the higher the pitch, the faster the vibration.  The farther the ruler was hanging over, the lower the pitch, the slower the vibration was.

We also read parts of this great book from our own school library.  Simple Science Sound by Mike and Maria Gordon.

Hearing and Sound

January 10th

This week we started our new Science unit: Hearing and Sound.

We're off to a good start!  We're excited about this new unit.

We have been playing "What's that Sound?" We have been listening to sound effects and trying to figure out what the sounds are.  It's been fun!

We have been discussing and investigating the fact: Sound is the result of vibration!

We watched the video Magic School Bus video:  Inside the Haunted House. (found on Youtube) This is a great story.  We also have the book in our classroom.

Here are a few of the things that we learned from this story:

• sound comes from vibrations
• vibrations move through the air
• an echo is sound bouncing off of something
• we saw what sound waves look like
• we learned how instruments make sound
• and learned that high sounds are from fast vibrations and low sounds are from slow vibrations.

Click on the book to read a Goodreads Summary.