Sound – lower primary

Welcome to this collection on sound, such a fun topic to be learning about! Adapt the following resources to meet your needs and be in touch if we can help.

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Much of this collection content is taken from Building Science Concepts: Exploring Sound

https://scienceonline.tki.org.nz/Teaching-resources/Building-Science-Concepts/Titles-and-concept-overviews/Exploring-Sound

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Reminder: This collection can be copied and added to your profile so you can edit and share as you wish.

What is sound?

For sounds to be produced, something needs to move.

Sound is a form of energy. To create sound you need an input of energy in the form of movement. Striking, scraping or blowing into an object makes it vibrate. These changes in pressure create waves of vibrations that move both the object and the substance surrounding it – usually air. If the vibrations reach our ears, we hear a sound. If there is no movement, then no vibrations are created and no sound is made.

Hearing sound

Three things are needed for sound to be heard:

• A source – something that makes the sound – movement is needed
• A medium – something for the sound to travel through – gas, liquid or solid
• A receiver – something to detect the sound – for example our ears

Changes to the source or medium changes the sounds we hear. We are able to detect changes in direction, volume and pitch.

How does sound travel?

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Changes in pressure create waves of vibrations that move both an object and the substance surrounding it – usually air.

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You can use a slinky to visualise sound moving as a wave. Teacher support for this can be found in the following activity. We suggest simplifying this for younger children and for older children you may want to investigate the idea that air is made up of tiny particles too small for us to see.

How is sound affected by different materials?

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Different materials pass on the vibrations in different ways. How close the particles are in the material changes how effective it is in passing on the vibrations – you can test this by listening to someone tap a table with a ruler then place your ear to the table and listen again.

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Children may also be familiar with how sounds change underwater. If this is an area they are interested in you might like the activity: https://www.sciencelearn.org.nz/resources/583-sounds-in-a-pool

How do people process sound?

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Ears are super important to our hearing. Use the following article and image to explore ears and how they work. Do be aware that many children experience hearing loss.

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You may want to look at the concepts of volume and pitch. To start you can use the following simple activities:

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What you need: Sound making items e.g. musical instruments, pots and pans, sticks, jar of beans.

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What you do

1. Exploring volume

• Demonstrate, or ask a student to demonstrate make a soft sound with an item.
• Repeat making a loud sound.
• Discuss words you might use to describe these sounds. E.g. quiet, noisy, big, small etc.
• The scientific word for this change in sound is volume. Make a connection to volume on the TV or radio.

What you look for

Can children differentiate between different volumes?

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2. Exploring pitch

• Demonstrate, or ask a student to demonstrate make a low sound
• Repeat, making a high sound
• Make two different pitched sounds and ask students which sound is higher and which is lower.
• The scientific word for this change in sound is pitch.

What you look for

Can children differentiate between different volumes?

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3. Comparing volume and pitch

Ask students if they can make a soft (quiet) high sound then a loud low sound?

Can they describe the differences between sound and correctly identify volume and pitch using words like loud, soft, high and low?

Sound and music

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• Sounds that we like can be combined to make music.
• We make sounds by actions such as striking, blowing, plucking, and scraping.
• Musical instruments all make vibrations. They have features that allow them to make different sounds.