Week1: What Do the Children Know About Sound?

Where does sound come from?  The children were very attuned to the sounds they could make with their bodies.  Mouth strumming, cheek popping, tongue clicking, singing, feet stomping, hands clapping.  But where else do we hear sounds?  Paxton said we hear sounds from the radio, Cameron replied "that's not sound that's music!"  And with that I asked, well what makes music?  The children said that instruments and singing make music.   In the next eight weeks, we will be exploring sound, music, and how we can express our feelings through sound and music.

Kesler made small sounds by sticking his tongue out

Matthew was particularly fond of "tap dancing" and singing.

Cameron said sound is from the radio, trains,  airplanes, birds.  "I can clap my hands and my feet to make sounds."

Week1-2: Vibrations and Play

Today the children had a chance to play with different instruments and share their feelings.  After our play I asked one question:  did we make music or make sounds?  Kesler responded by putting his hands over his ears.  Ryleigh and Cameron said they were making music.  Cameron said it was music because he liked it.  Connor said he was making making sounds and music and that he'll let me know which was which, Matthew said he was making music because he was playing instruments. 

Ryleigh:  "It sounds like a clock"

Week 2: How is Sound Made?

Earth group loves to make sounds with with their feet, hands, and their mouths!  Since all children love cause and effect, so we explored what we he do to cause the macaroni, stones, and marbles to jump and what is the sound effect?  Cause and effect is how children learn to control and interact with their environment, and understanding cause and effect helps develop problem solving skills.  With that in mind, we made drum today, to give a visual understanding of how sound is created when they tap the drum.

But where does sound come from?  We started by feeling the vibration in our throats when we sing or talk.  Connor noticed that "it moves a lot" when he shouts and sings.

Children feeling the vibration in their throats

Playing drums and listening to the different sounds that macaroni, rocks, and marbles make.  Which one jumps the most?  The macaroni!!!

Francine enjoys turing macaroni into jumping beans!  But she notes that it's hard to make the rocks and marbles jump off the drum.

Week3-1: Sound Experiments

Today the children experimented with making different sounds, loud, soft and medium using different surfaces.  Bouncing a ball on the carpet sounds very different from bouncing the ball on the concrete and the grass.

Boucing the ball on the wood chips did not work as well as we thought

The children learning mouth strumming.

Jumping on the wood chips definately made a sounds that the children could control

The jumping session on the concrete turned into more of a dance session, as each child carefully maneuver around each other sharing their small stage:

Week3-2: Musical Chairs: High notes, low notes

Can children recognize the difference between high notes and low notes?  We played a game to practice!  Stand up if you hear a high note, sit down if you hear a low note.  I played the xylophone, and the children gave examples of what the high notes sounded like "birds singing" and "clocks ringing."  However, they also thought that the low notes sounded like birds, so then I decided to used my voice.  I sang a familiar song "Daddy loves the bear" in operatic style and also in a lower register.  We called the higher version the mamma bear version and the lower version the papa bear version.  It was clear to me that this helped them recognize the difference as they were standing and sitting at high and low notes, but when I went back to the xylophone, there was confusion all over again !

Week3-3: Movement and Sound: Shakers and Song Forms

Today we played with the form of songs using shakers to help us "feel" when a song phrase starts and stops.  Forst the children practiced reading the song map with their fingers and then they used their shakers and rattled to the form of the song.

Matthew reading a song map

Connor reading a song map

Paxton reading a song map

Kesler and Matthew making their shakers

The Song Form : Clickety Clickety Clack 

Week3-4: Little Conductors: Danza Macabra Op.40

After taking a picture walk through "I See A Song" by Eric Carle, I asked the children "what do they think the images "sound" like?"  Is it loud, soft, high, low, singing voices, instruments?  Here is how they expressed themselves:

Connor began singing and then he said that the balloons explode with a boom (clapped his hands)!

Ryleigh said there is no more music

Paxton said maybe it sounds like a violin because the conductor was holding a violin

Cameron, Matthew, and Kesler were not sure

I explained to the children that the conductor has a very important job.  Cameron said he's the boss, like the conductor of a train, so he's the boss of the music!  We watched Saint Saens Danza Macabra Op.40, listened, swayed our bodies, paused to identify the instruments, and then we made bat conductor wands and played conductor!

Week4-1: Feelings and Emotions in Sound and Music

In our continued exploration of "I See A Song" by Eric Carle, I let the children tell me the story of what they saw on the pages.  A violinist enters on the first few pages, he begins to play and what results is a colourful artistic depiction of his music.  As he begins he says "I see a song.  I paint music.  I hear colours."

The Children's Story: 

The conductor is all black.  There are floating rainbow balloons that turn into raindrops and fall down into the ocean. The balloons explode !!! There is a blue whale, the sun and the moon, and they are all smiling.  Rainbow flowers come up and up.  The conductor is filled up so now there's rainbows in him.  At this point the children were excited to create their own story.   

For the third and final reading of the book,  we watched an animated version of the book which is accompanied by classical music.  I asked the children to paint their own song to express how they feel.

Matthews song goes "doo, foo, foo" and he feels happy a little bit.

Paxtons song goes "hoop, shroop, hoop" and he feels silly.

Kesler painted "lots of songs"

Mila said "Ahhh, this is a gentle song"

Connor giggled " Dop, Dot, Doop, and I just like it!"

Week4-2: Form of a Song in Action

Today we played a song game called "Daddy Loves the Bear."  We passed along the bear.  The bear stops when the song stops, and whoever the song "chose" had a chance to express how they know daddy, mommy, grandpa, grandma loves them.  Mila said that grandma and grandpa tell her that they love her "to the moon and back."

Damon says mommy gives him hugs

In order to further our exploration, we created a map of the song and traced it with our fingers.

Damon reading the song map

Kesler reading the song map

Cameron reading the song map

The children then had an opportunity to create their own song maps and then practice "reading" the map with their fingers.

Week4-3: I Can Paint Music

"I Can See A Song" has inspired our activity for today, creating art and making music at the same time.  I attached jingle bells and shakers to paint brushes and watched as the children "painted music."  We took a picture walk through the book one last time and the children listened to some classical music.  Once I handed then their musical painting tools, and here is what I observed:

Francine joined the group a bit later, so she had a chance to observe how to use the jingle bell and shaker paint brushes.  She said that "it was too noisy and loud- not nice music."  She was very careful and precise with her brushes so as not to "make any noise." She requested her own piece of paper and this is what she created:

The children are experimenting with how to hold their musical paint brushes

The more shaking, the more sound, the more rigorously they painted.

Connor painting with both the bell and shaker  paint brushes