Children often pause to listen—anticipating the rumble of an approaching garbage truck, tapping two objects together, or delighting in an unexpected outdoor sound. These moments are early signs of their investigations into acoustics, the science of how sound is created, and how it travels through the world.
In early childhood settings, we can nurture this curiosity by offering open‑ended invitations to notice, compare, and wonder. Read on for acoustics activities to explore with your children.
Join Little Scientists’ Facebook group “Early STEM Educators Network” to share your sound explorations and STEM ideas with educators all over Australia.
Questions Spark Inquiry
As children explore, they may begin posing questions such as:
🎵 How is sound made?
🎵 How does sound travel?
🎵 What happens when I make a louder or softer sound?
🎵 How do different animals make their sounds?
These questions are the starting point for rich inquiry, experimentation, and collaborative thinking.
Seeing Sound
Sound is usually felt or heard, but can it be seen?
Invite children to explore vibration by placing a bluetooth speaker in a ziplock bag, covering it with foil, and then sand. Play a song through the speaker.
Some questions you could ask:
- What changes as different sounds play?
- Do patterns emerge?
- What might be causing the movement?
- What happens if the song is changed?
Become Foley Artists
Foley artists create sound effects for film and television using everyday objects. Introducing children to this idea can open a world of imaginative sound‑making. For example, educators could:
- Invite children to create sound effects for a puppet show, a short play, or a muted video.
- Offer a buffet of materials that make different types of sounds, such as marbles, blocks, shoes, tins, bottles, and tongs.
- Step back and see what sounds children invent.
The emphasis is not on children’s accuracy, instead it’s all about playful experimentation, listening closely, and refining ideas together.
You can see educators working as foley artists in this video taken at a Little Scientists “Acoustics & Peer Group Learning” Workshop.
The Wired video about foley artists below can also provide inspiration into the kinds of creative processes that could inform your planning.
Exploring a Sound Archive
The BBC Sound Effects Archive offers a huge range of audio from nature, transport, daily life, and more. Listening to unfamiliar or surprising sounds can deepen children’s awareness and spark new investigations.
Some ways to use the archive include:
🔊 Playing a sound and inviting children to describe it, guess its source, or recreate it with materials at hand.
🔊 Enriching dramatic play, such as adding construction sounds to block play or gentle medical beeps to hospital play.
🔊 Exploring the visual waveform displayed on the website. What might these shapes represent? Can children draw their own “sound pictures” of familiar noises?
This supports children’s noticing, imagination, and early scientific reasoning.
Hearing Sounds Without Your Ears: Exploring Vibration and Bone Conduction
You can extend children’s inquiry by exploring sound as something more than what we hear, but also something we feel. Begin by inviting children to cover their ears, wear earmuffs, or noise‑cancelling headphones. What can they still hear? What do they notice changes?
Then offer the children a small buffet of objects for vibration exploration, such as:
- A tuning fork
- An electric toothbrush
- A comb plucked like a small instrument
- An inflated balloon with someone humming nearby
Next, encourage children to hold the vibrating object to their jawbone or temple and describe what they notice.
- Do they “hear” the vibration through their body?
- Does it feel different to sound through the air?
- What else could they test?
This playful exploration can lead to surprising discoveries about how vibrations travel and how our bodies perceive them.
Looking for More Inspiration?
Here are some additional resources to extend your investigations:
- Noisy by Nature (ABC) is a child‑friendly listening adventure exploring sounds in natural environments.
- KiwiCo’s simple sound exploration video
- Acoustics explorations from the South Australia Department of Education
Evidence-based STEM professional development:
