In the Pre-toddler room we have been observing the sounds we hear whilst we are out in the garden. The children will often point up in the air when they can hear different types of noises coming from cars, motorbikes and emergency services in the area around us. We also listened out for different sounds coming from the natural world. As our children showed such a keen interest in different sounds we thought it would be a lovely idea to explore sound, how sound can be made and how we can change the way something sounds.
We placed a range of materials out on the table such as flour, cheerios, rice crispies and pasta for the children to explore. We then demonstrated how we could use these materials to explore a variety of different sounds. The children immediately got involved in pouring pasta, flour and cheerios into pots to see what happened. Some of the children understood that they needed to put the lids onto the pots to stop anything from falling out. We asked the children to predict what the sound might be and then they would go on to shake them to see what happened, smiling intently when sounds were made, noticing that not much sound came from flour! One of our children shook a pot full of rice crispies that fell out onto the floor, she then went on to stand on them and noticed that this also made a sound. She looked at her carers and said “wow!” continuing to stand on them and crunch them underfoot, encouraging her friends to join in. We then moved onto exploring how we could make sounds with some of the resources within our room such as pots and pans. The children loved how loud they could be banging the spoons of the pots and shouting “bang bang bang!”. When we had explored all these materials one little girl walked over to the musical instruments and found a small egg shaker. She brought it to her carer and said “look i did it too.” The children had so much fun exploring sound and were so engaged throughout each of our activities! The children then continued to show how much they had learnt from this activity by repeating their actions over the next few days!
EYFS links:
Expressive art and design
“Explores and experiments with a range of media through sensory exploration and using of whole body.”
“Creates sounds by banging, shaking, tapping and blowing”
“shows and interest in the way muscial instruments sound”
Understanding the World
“Notices detailed features of objects in their environment”
Shape, Space and Measure
“Enjoys filling and emptying containers”