IPS/Butler University Laboratory School

All this week, we have been exploring sound patterns. Thursday and today, friends were invited to figure out how they could incorporate instruments into their sound patterns. Coincidentally, this also opened up the idea of teaching other friends our song patterns which started the idea of bands and orchestras. It has been a pleasure to watch the kids communicate with one another and become excited about teaching and learning one anothers’ songs. Today, I asked the kids to think about what music was. Without discussion, the kids were invited to create illustrations and drawings of music. Next week, we will talk together about the concept of music and revisit these pictures. It was exciting to see much of our learning about sound incorporated into friends’ pictures, such as sound waves, vibration, and pitch.

Tags: curious, music, project, sound, thinking

This week, we have been talking a lot about patterns and how they may connect to sound and listening. We have been practicing creating patterns in many ways, including creating them with our bodies. Our friends love trying out other friends’ body patterns. It feels like dancing!

This morning  friends were presented with several patterns that I had drawn. A simple ABAB pattern, an AABB pattern, and a few others. After talking about characteristics of patterns, I then posed the question to them, “How can you incorporate this with sound?”

Almost immediately, Makenzi mentioned that she had been playing the piano in the big studio with Mrs. Grotjan and had followed along with something that looked like a pattern that told her what notes to play. That gave us the idea that we could create music to these patterns!

We tried singing high pitches and low pitches to the ABAB pattern. Then we tried with some of the other patterns. When a new pattern gave us a third option, one friend suggested clapping instead of singing for that portion. This then inspired us to create our own song patterns. We had so much fun creating and sharing them!

Tags: music, patterns, project, sound

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

Today our class made pan pipes. We created these by lining up 8 different sizes of cut straws longest to shortest. Then we taped the straw pieces together and blew away! We had some conversations about how the sound waves traveled through the different straws and what that meant for pitch. Earlier this morning, a friend had created an instrument that changed pitch. We learned that the less rubber band space the instrument had, the higher the pitch. The more space the sound waves had to travel, the lower the pitch. We were interested to see if this was true for the panpipes- and it was! See if your learner can play different pitches for you.

Tags: listening, music, project, sound

Today we explored eardrums! We created artificial eardrums by rubber banding plastic wrap over red plastic cups. We talked about how the plastic wrap represented the thin membrane covering the ear drum. To observe vibration, we opened a packet of sugar onto the top of each plastic wrapped cup and shouted at various levels. The sugar danced! We then tried singing, whispering, and shouting at different intervals to see what the sugar would do. We discovered that the sugar moved as a result of vibration. We created sounds which traveled via sound wave to the ear drums. The ear drums then vibrated! In a real ear, we learned this is part of a chain reaction. The ear drum then activates the anvil, hammer, and stirrup bones in the middle ear which activate the cochlea. The cochlea then activates the nerve ending which sends a signal to the brain to tell it what it is hearing. WOW! Science rocks.

Tags: experiment, project