Thought Bite - Designing Experimentation - Construction - Sound

One child was exploring sound in my session this week. She was observing different sounds throughout the session. She was using different materials to produce sound. She was using different surfaces to produce sound. She wanted to check how sound passes through different surfaces. She placed a steel glass on a wooden surface and made sound using a spoon. She then placed the glass on a cement surface and tried and thereafter, placed a thick napkin, placed the glass on it, and repeated the experiment. She used cloth, plastic, wall, water. She used spring to check if sound can pass through. She tried with a stretched string, relaxed string. She was connecting sound and vibration (of the string as well as spring).

She came back after the toilet and told me: “Aunty, there is no need to experiment if sound can pass through air. When I went for the toilet, I heard the sound of air first. I then observed that I was able to hear all the things that you all were talking about. That told me that sound is able to pass through air.”