IPS/Butler University Laboratory School

We had a mini field trip today to the audiology center! We are lucky enough to have it housed in our building. Miss Sally, our district audiologist, gave us a tour of the center and the soundproof hearing screening room. Miss Sally was impressed with our knowledge about the parts of the ear and taught us a little bit about a tool called a Timpometer. This tool measures our ear drums’ activity. She let each friend have a try. It was very cool to watch the computer show how our ear drums reacted to the vibration. Miss Sally also taught us about hearing aids and how they work. We learned that if we had trouble hearing, we could use a tool called a hearing aid to help us. We got to try out the aids and see how they amplified the sound for us. Such a neat day!

Tags: curious, field trip, project, sound

This week, we are looking a little bit deeper into the human ear. Today, we did observational drawings of the ear. We learned that there is an inner ear and outer ear and hope to learn more about the eardrum later this week.

Tags: curious, observation, project, sound

How does sound travel? We learned sound travels via vibrations. Vibrations in the air are called sound waves. Today we experimented with sound by creating cup phones and talking to our neighbors! Here is a snapshot of our conversation after our experience.

We made cups and we talked in them and another person put their cup to their ear. Cariah

We made some echos in the cup. Hold it tight! Greyson

It works because of the vibrations on the strong. Lucas

Why do we need the cups? Could we just use the string? Mrs. Goldsmith

The cups are actually for you to put your eat and mouth on so you can make the echo sound come in. And when youre like on the other side its kinda similar. We don’t know how it does it. Its like magic. Dylan

Was it more important to be the listener or the talker today? Mrs. Argus

Listener, because you have to actually like, be quiet to hear… Dylan

Yeah, like you listen! Beatrice

If somebody’s talking, you don’t talk through it. Dylan

Listening is more important because you can learn more about the person that is talking. J’Den

An amazing conversation. 🙂

Tags: collaboration, curious, problem solving, project, thinking

This morning, the class explored different ways to create sound. They were also encouraged to write what sounds they heard and to answer the question, “What is sound?”. We had some great discussions on sound waves and vibrations, as well as how the ear works. We are excited to take this a step further tomorrow and look more deeply into the concept!

Tags: collaboration, creativity, curious, inspiration, project, sound

As you know, we have been watching three different lima beans grow- one in soil, one in sand, and one in a paper towel. After carefully watering for a week, we have started to see some results! We noticed that our lima bean seed in the paper towel has split open, and we can see a tiny sprout. We also noticed that the lima bean in the sand looks like it may be emerging to the top, by note of a small bump at the top of the sand. As scientists, we want to record all of our observations in our lima bean experiment. Today, we started a small journal where we draw pictures of each seed in their growing medium. We will document the seed growth each day, noting the fastest, healthiest, etc. It was not only exciting to see how much detail the kids put into their drawings, but also their use of adjectives and words to help them describe in their small notebooks what was happening in each picture.

Tags: curious, garden, project