Materials:

• portable cassette recorder
• chart paper and markers

Objective: Children will identify and create different sounds in their environment to develop sensory awareness and language skills.

In Advance: Record a variety of familiar sounds such as an alarm clock, vacuum cleaner, blender, bouncing ball, car, running water, washing machine, clothes dryer, dishwasher, closing door, hammering, and people talking.

ACTIVITIES

1. Invite children to the meeting area to play a listening guessing game.
2. Explain that you have recorded a variety of sounds and that they can listen to the recordings and guess what each sound is. Remind the children that they must be very quiet to hear all of the sounds.
3. As you play the tape, offer clues to help children as they guess. How many sounds were they able to identify? Place the tape recorder in the listening area and invite children to continue to play the guessing game with their classmates.
4. Now invite children to explore the environment to learn about the sounds that different materials can make. Divide the class into small groups and assign them to different areas of the room. You can also invite the entire group to work together to investigate and explore sound in each learning center in the classroom.
5. What are the different types of sounds that blocks make? Do crayons and chalk make sounds? What types of sounds can paper, foil, or cellophane make? Explore sounds at the sand or water table. Use the cassette recorder for their investigations. Invite the group to play another sound guessing game to identify the different sounds they recorded.
6. Create a language experience chart to summarize what children learned about sounds.

Curriculum Connection: PROBLEM SOLVING

What Does Not Make a Sound? Ask children to find materials in the classroom that do not make sounds. Create an experience chart to record these materials.