Materials
Tape recorder
Paper
Marker
Instructions
1. Ahead of time, make a tape recording of everyday noises at home. Some examples are:running water, door closing, television playing, radio playing, toilet flushing, telephone ringing,doorbell chiming, etc.
2. At circle time, talk to the children about hearing. Ask the children if they know how we hear.Tell them they are going to play a listening game. Request that they be totally silent for abouta minute. Tell them ahead of time that you will signal them when that time is up. Inform themthat during the minute of silence they will be listening for sounds both inside and outside theclassroom. When the time is up, ask the children to tell what they heard. Make a list with twocolumns, one for inside and one for outside noises.
3. Play the tape recording, and ask the children to guess the noises.More to doLanguage: During free time call the children over one at a time and explain that you want themto say something into the tape recorder so you can record their voices. When you have recordedall the children, you can use this tape as another listening exercise. Play the tape and ask for thechild who is talking on the tape to raise her hand. It's interesting to observe that some childrenwill not be able to identify themselves at first. Save the tape to play later in the year.
