Discovery Museum Presents...Sound!

The 1-2s had a visit from Discovery Museum this week! The presenter, Ms. Talbot, ran an excellent program on Sound (one of our science topics this year).  She started with an inquiry about how sound travels and through which media. Can it move through air? Water? Solids? How does something make a sound?

From there, the kids got to move through three exploratory stations. At one table, students used a tuning fork to create sounds and noticed that they could actually see the sound producing vibrations. Holding the tuning fork next to a styrofoam ball, they saw how the sound vibrations actually caused the ball to move! They tried to see how many times their tuning fork's vibration could bounce the ball.

Another table was covered with various metal instruments - a hanger, a spring, a spoon, a potato masher, a wrench. Each thing had two strings attached with loops on the ends. The kids put their fingers through the loops and touched their fingers to their ears as they then banged the instrument against the side of the table. The sounds transformed from bangy-clangy noises to deeper, richer bonging which made many kids think of church bells.

At the last station, each spot was set with a mallet, a tuning fork and a dish of water. The task was to hit the tuning fork with the mallet, hold it in the water dish and see what happened. They were very surprised to see that they were suddenly in the "splash zone"! The vibrations of the tuning fork caused major disturbance to the surface of the water.

The kids all had a blast with these hands-on experiences! We're sure you all got a kick out of the "quackers" they brought home (though it may have lost its luster in a few short quacks...). Ms. Talbot actually had a huge one made of a large bucket which was SUPER LOUD!  You may notice your child now paying more attention to the sounds things around the house make or find "tuning fork" on their birthday list. This program generated a lot of interest and enthusiasm about sound!

Check out the pictures below from both class visits:

January Town Forest Walk

It was a beautiful day for our monthly town forest walk and despite the meager amount of snow still on the ground, we were able to see quite a few tracks in the woods! While we know many animals make the town forest their home, we do not get to see most of them. As elusive as they are (except for those squirrels!) they do leave traces behind to let us know who's been around and active. One sign we look for is animal tracks, another is animal scat. Though most of the tracks and scat we see in the town forest have been left behind by people and their dogs, there were many others scattered about - particularly off the trails.

Tracks we observed today included dog, squirrel, rabbit, deer, fisher, and a possible fox. Rabbit and squirrel tracks look almost the same. Both of these animals land with their back paws in front of their front paws. But rabbits stagger their front paws while squirrels keep their front paws side by side.

Scat that we noticed were left behind by rabbit and deer. These are also similar in appearance. Rabbit scat look like tiny marbles - very round. Deer scat have a more oblong, bullet-type shape that comes to a point on one end and has a concave depression on the other end.

Other highlights of the trip included some adventures our groups had in our woods - some were enjoying the woods of Narnia while others were exploring in the Forbidden Forest. One rogue band of outsiders reemerged from the woods with a handful of sticks and cries of triumph! It was heart warming to see them all enjoying being outside!

Enjoy pictures below from today's walk:

Fisher Tracks:

Rabbit Scat:

A spot where a squirrel enjoyed a snack!

Another squirrel snack bar!

Deer scat:

Two "beds" in a deer yard:

Rabbit track:

Deer tracks: