Making Music

  

Students investigate, design, and build musical instruments.

Core concepts include sound, longitudinal and transverse waves, pitch, and amplification.

Sleep Soundly at Beaver's Inn brings the concepts to life with a fictional story about nature sounds that help make different animals feel at home.

Lesson Plan Overview: Suggested 7 lessons over 10 days

Lesson 1 - Why Do We Hear Sounds?
Students explore sounds and what happens when a sound is made. They list what they already know and what they want to know about sound, which they will revisit over the course of the unit. They use tuning forks and observe wat happens when they are struck.

Lesson 2 - Drumming On My Ear
Students learn more about the form that sound waves take and how humans hear sound. They build a model of a human eardrum and see how the model eardrum reacts to sounds.

Lesson 3 - Making Music
Students are introduced to a variety of musical instruments. Students examine the instruments to see the differences in the various parts to determine why they might make different sounds. They explore the features of their team’s instrument and describe why they think it can make different sounds.

Lesson 4 - Stringing It Along
In this activity, students explore how aspects of a string affect the sound made when the string is plucked. They then share the results of their research with other teams.

Lesson 5 - Make It Louder
In this activity, students examine the example instrument to see the different types of materials used to construct the bodies. They experiment with different materials to see how they affect the volume of the sound produced by a tuning fork.

Lesson 6 - Build Your Instrument
In this activity, students will build an instrument to meet EarthToy Designs’ specifications using knowledge that they’ve gained over the course of the unit. In teams, students discuss how they will design their instruments and build some prototype instruments to test. Based on their tests, students build their instruments.

Lesson 7 - The Instrument Orchestra
In the previous session, students had the opportunity to create an instrument that met the EarthToy Designs specifications. In this session, students present their musical instruments to the rest of the class and show how they meet the specifications.

 

Kit Materials

This kit provides materials for class size of 24 students working in teams of four.
 

Full Kit Items

Quantity

Teacher Kit Items

Quantity

Tuning Fork Set of 8

1

Roll of Plastic Wrap

1

Tuning Fork Mallets

7

Bag of Rubberbands (L)

1

Plastic Bowls

6

Bag of Rice

1

Roll of Plastic Wrap 

1

Styrofoam Cups

2

Bag of Rubber Bands (L)

1

Yarn

1

Bag of Rice 

1

Ball of String

1

Metal Slinkies 

6

Small Craft Sticks

56

Stringed Instruments Poster

1

Bells

144

Geoboards 

12

Balloons

1 bag

Styrofoam Cups

2

Pie Tins with Lid

6

Wood Blocks

6

Bag of Rubberbands (assorted sizes)

1

Styrofoam Blocks 

6

Paper Plates

1 pack

Plastic Block   (1 block = 4 cubes)

24

Jumbo Paper Clips

1 box

Digital Sound Meters

6

Student Science Notebooks

24

Yarn 

1

 

 

Ball of String 

1

 

 

Small Craft Sticks

56

 

 

Bells 

144

 

 

Balloons 

1 bag

 

 

Pie Tins with Lid

6

 

 

Bag of Rubberbands (assorted sizes)

1

 

 

Paper Plates

1 pack

 

 

Jumbo Paper Clips 

1 box

 

 

Band-In-A-Box Instruments

1

 

 

Model Human Ear

1

 

 

Xylophone

1

 

 

Student Science Notebooks 

24

 

 

Children's Book: Sleep Soundly at Beaver's Inn

1

 

 

Downloadable Curriculum and Supporting Files

1

 

 

Resources

Sample Lesson Plan

Tradebooks to Introduce STEM

X