The second graders have finished up their animal study of snails and have moved on to a unit on sound. They have used some tuning forks and have discovered that sound is produced by and travels by vibrations. In the pictures below students listen to a metal clothes hanger vibrate on two pieces of string. Try it at home – it’s very cool! Tie a piece of string around each of the curved “shoulder” parts of the hanger. Circle the strings around your pointer fingers a few times and place your fingers gently into your ears. With the hanger swinging freely, gently hit it against a hard surface. It sounds like a church bell.
In these pictures, students are trying to match up sounds coming from filled plastic eggs. This activity involved a lot of talk back and forth with partners and brought up such words as “high”, “low”, “soft”, and “loud”. This activity prepares students to talk about pitch and volume in the next few classes.
