Musical Glasses

You can all recall dinging on your glasses at a wedding reception, or when you were bored at a restaurant as a kid, right? It's a simple little thing that reinforces the concept of vibration producing sound (which we started in this activity), and the factors that are involved in making different pitches - high or low sounds.

This is good on a too-rainy, or too-hot day when kids are getting a little antsy. :-)

Gather materials:

• Glasses (Glasses with a stem are best for the sound, but I doubt you'll want to break out your fine crystal for your preschooler to play with... So, tall glasses will work well too.)
• Water in differing amounts per glass (test out the sound of each to make sure you can hear differences in pitch)
• Metal spoons
• Optional - food coloring for added fun. 

Gather kiddos to table. Mine saw me putting out glasses of water and immediately came to see what was going on. 

Talk about sound being made by vibration. Demonstrate that tapping a glass (around the rim is best for the most resonance) makes the glass vibrate. The more glass available to vibrate (i.e. less water) the higher the pitch (sound), and the less glass available to vibrate (i.e. more water) produces a lower sound. 

Demonstrate the different pitches and how to *gently* tap the glass.

(If you wanted to add food coloring to the different glasses, that's great too... we did a few)

"Oooooooohhh......" 

Let kid/s give it a try and make their own combinations of sounds. 

Talk about which ones are high-pitched and low-pitched and the in-betweens and why. 

Especially with my boys, I had to keep an ear on their "gentle" tapping, but they kept at this for a while on their own and seemed to enjoy it a lot. Yay! 

J had the most fun playing this one that sounded like a fire engine bell:

Have fun! 

Good Vibration(s)

Today was a simple lesson in how sound is produced. Key word: Vibration.
Sometimes we take sound for granted... I mean, it's just... sound.
You bang a pot, it makes a sound.  You open your mouth to speak, there's sound. You touch a piano key, there's sound.
Vibration makes that sound possible... so I decided to plant some seeds for that concept today.

Super easy.
This is what we used:

A cork board

Push pins that have a plastic grip --->
rubber bands of different lengths (thin-ish ones, the thick ones are too strong for this humble activity)
Construction paper cut into long strips (2 per child).

And - NO part of this activity should be done without parental involvement and supervision! This is kind of obvious, but just in case...

OK, so gather kids and bring them to the materials.

I told mine to put the two strips into the shape of a letter "V"

Once, they figured that out, I helped get them to put 4 push pins in their letter: one at the bottom, one at each of the top ends, and one about 2/3 the way up one side. Be very involved in this - or just do it yourself. Make sure the pins are in as far as they can go.

Yes, that is my foot. So professional, I know.

Next, loop the rubber bands from one tack to the next, along the shape of the V. You should have three rubberbands on the V when you're done - one very long, one medium long, and one shortest of all.

Once you're all set up, talk about your key word for the day, "VIBRATION!" Hence our V for Vibration.
**Gently** pluck the rubber bands on each group, listening to the sound each makes and watching the rubber vibrate back and forth. Pick out the low, medium and high sounds and talk about shorter "strings" producing higher sounds, etc..

We tried some rhythms and patterns... OK, I tried rhythms and patterns and they did their own brilliant improv...  :-) 

They had a lot of fun with this... but as is their nature, they started to get a bit carried away with the "plucking" so it was time to move on to phase two. 

If you happen to have a stringed instrument in your house, this little add-on can supplement what you were just doing... if not, no worries! Just mentally check out now. :-) 

Being music nerds, we have a few string instruments that demonstrate this vibration concept... guitar and violin. 

First, demonstrate how to make vibration on each instrument. Demonstrate where low-pitched and higher pitched strings are. 

Again - with MUCH SUPERVISION, invite kiddos to pluck or strum the instruments to produce a vibration, and hence - sound! 

You can see that the two-year-old has abandoned these lesser things and moved on to Mozart Piano Sonatas... way to go, buddy.

Enjoy!