Shake It Up!

Activity Overview

How do we sort? This question is explored throughout early childhood education as we think about naming attributes, identifying opposites, patterning, graphing, and other mathematical concepts. This early sorting activity gives students a hands-on way to compare and contrast sound with everyday objects found in and around the home. Additionally, students will be asked to follow a complex set of directions aimed to help them organize their process. It is important to find ways - such as this activity - for children to practice executive functioning skills such designing plans, following multi-step directions, and self regulation as they grow and develop into more independent learners. The work students will do in this activity helps reinforce learning building blocks that build to more complicated skills as they grow and mature.

This activity works on the skills practiced in Big & Small but engages our aural sense instead of our visual sense. This practice helps foster the student’s growing phonological awareness - the ability to attend, discriminate, remember and manipulate sounds - which is essential to future reading development.

What You Need

• Loud & Quiet labels

• Two bins

• A plastic container with a lid

• Several materials that make quiet sounds: pom poms, cotton balls, feathers, napkins, socks

• Several materials that make loud sounds: beads, buttons, Legos, coins, rocks

Steps

1. Cut out the Loud & Quiet labels and attach each one to a bin so that you have a Loud Bin and a Quiet Bin.

2. Spread out the materials so that you and your student can see all of them. Talk about each material and make predictions about whether it would make a loud or quiet sound.

3. Place some of the material into the container. For example, place some pom poms into the container. Close the container, and invite your student to shake it up!

4. Discuss whether the sound made by the material is loud or quiet and why. For example, discuss that because the pom poms are made of a soft material they make a quiet sound when they come into contact with another material.

5. After your student has determined whether the sound is loud or quiet, guide them to place the material into the corresponding bin.

Guiding Questions

• Do you think the [pom poms] will make a loud or quiet sound? Why?

• Is this sound loud or quiet?

Extensions

• Count how many materials made quiet sounds and how many made loud sounds.

• Order the materials in a row from softest sound to loudest sound.

• Explore a variety of sounds through our Shaker Making activity!