Happy Tuesday! I wanted to share our awesome sound experiments we did on Monday for our Sound Unit and link up with Holly for Tried It Tuesday! We learned all that we needed to know with the help of my handy-dandy sound interactive notebook activities I created (which are on TPT!) so that students could apply this knowledge to their experiments.

They were so excited when I told them last week that we would be experimenting with sound, but only if they learned all that they needed to know first… Giving them something to look forward to is always a motivator!!

I gave the students this Lab Sheet to use as they rotated through the stations:

Setting up these stations is SUPER easy! You will need two different sized tuning forks (one thick and one thin), a bucket or pan with water, a hanger with some string, access to the internet, and five jars with different levels of water (I put different colors of food coloring in my jars, too).

At the tuning fork station, students are striking the tuning forks to hear the difference in sounds. Then they also get to “see” sound- by touching the vibrating tuning fork to the surface of the water, it makes the water splash! (I had to show each of my groups because they wanted to completely sink their tuning fork…)

At the hanger station, they can hear how sounds travel differently through the air and through solids. They tap the hanger on their desk and hear a tiny clink… but with string attached to the hanger, wrapped around their fingers, and then fingers in their ears, it sounds very loud, almost like a gong!

At the third station, you could do this with individual computers if you had them, or like me- I had it projected on the SmartBoard! This is the website that goes with the lab sheet. I love those BBC websites, don’t you?

And last, at the water jar station, the students get to hear how varying levels of water can make different pitches in the jars. They had to arrange them from lowest to highest (don’t forget to tell them to mix them up for the next group). They tapped each with their pencil to hear the sounds.

My kids TOTALLY loved these stations!! I hope yours do, too! I’d love to hear how it goes in your room if you decide to do it, too! :o)