Cool Sounds Lesson Plan

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Academic Standards

 

Reading Objective:

Children will read about an ice band that plays instruments made from ice.

When parts of a musical instrument vibrate, they make a cool sound!

Next Generation Science Standards:

1-PS4-1 Vibrating materials can make sound.

Vocabulary:

vibrate

Use these questions to check students’ understanding and stimulate discussion:

 

1.  What does vibrate mean? ( to move back and forth quickly)

2. What happens when the strings on a bass vibrate? (They make a sound.)

3. What happens when you blow air into a horn and it vibrates? (It makes a sound.)

4. What ice instrument would you like to play? (Answers will vary.)

 

Go online to print or project the Reading Checkpoint.

  • An ice band plays every year at the Ice Music Festival in a country called Norway. 
  • To make the instruments, they cut blocks of ice from a frozen lake. Then they shape the ice. 
  • After the festival, some of the instruments melt.

Materials: empty tissue boxes, rubber bands of different widths, copies of the skill sheet Optional: paper, glue, markers, and/or stickers to cover and decorate the tissue boxes

Overview: Children will learn about sound and vibrations firsthand when they stretch rubber bands across the openings of tissue boxes, pluck their “guitars,” and observe.

Directions:

  • Before the lesson, ask children to bring in empty tissue boxes. Several children can work on one “guitar.” Alternatively, children can do this at home. 
  • If you’re planning to have children decorate the tissue boxes, do that first. They can cover the boxes with paper or just add stickers! 
  • Give each child or group an assortment of rubber bands of different widths. Kids can stretch the rubber bands across the hole in the tissue box. 
  • Pluck a thin rubber band. What does that sound like?  
  • Pluck a thick one. Does that sound different? 
  • Pluck a rubber band and touch it. Do you feel the vibration?