Week 2: Hearing

Ears are the coolest.

Ears help humans and animals learn about our world. We use sound to communicate, find food, and identify danger. Ears are amazing!

The lesson outlines for each day are below. On Monday, be sure to tune into the Facebook Live Video, but all of the other activities are optional. Try them all, try just some, it’s up to you!

HERE’S THE PDF DOWNLOAD FOR ALL OF THE LESSON DETAILS OF THIS WEEK.

Need extra ideas to keep kiddo busy? We’ve got you covered. Check out our Safer and Funner pages for more.

Monday

Exploring with sound

1. Facebook Live Video: Carolyn kicks off the week with a video introducing our sense of hearing. Watch it live on our Facebook page at 1pm (the feed will start automatically). After the live lesson we’ll post the link here so you can watch it later.

2. Creative: Let’s make a sound map of your house, yard, or neighborhood! Sit and listen to the sounds around you, and write or draw what is making them and where they are located. Can you hear your neighbor across the street mowing their lawn? Can you hear a family member cooking food in the kitchen? These are great examples of what to put on your map. As you’re drawing, think about whether or not you usually hear these sounds. Are you only hearing them now because you are focusing on them?

3. Watch: Have you ever wondered about how we can hear the buzzing of a fly or waves on Lake Monona? Explore The Science of Hearing with Douglas L. Oliver and Ted-Ed to learn about the human auditory system and what makes our ears so amazing!

4. Activity: Take a (silent) hike! Go for a walk around your neighborhood and pay attention to the sounds as you go along. Then, go on the same walk while using earplugs or covering your ears. What are some things you don’t hear anymore? Can you still hear certain things?

5. Scavenger Hunt: Listen closely: find three human-made sounds, then three natural sounds. Bonus: listen for three different bird sounds and three mammal sounds too!

6. Nature Journal: Write or draw about the sounds you heard during your sound scavenger hunt, or about noises heard from your sit spot.

7. Sit Spot: Visit your sit spot during the day, and time out a minute for yourself to listen without talking. Write down as many sounds as you can hear! When the sun sets, visit your sit spot again and do the same listening and listing sounds exercise. When you’re finished, compare all the sounds you wrote down. Did you hear fewer or more sounds at nighttime? Did you hear some of the same sounds during both sit spots?

Tuesday

Birds make sounds (a lot of sounds!)

1. Creative: Owls and harriers have special feathers that give their faces a round, funnel-like shape. With these facial disks, sound from a wider area is directed straight to their ears, giving them sharper hearing. Cut a paper place in half: these are your new facial disks! Use your imagination to decorate each half-disk to match how you would look as a bird of prey!

   1. Have someone whisper something to you from across the room while you hold your facial disks up to your face, and then when you aren’t. Can you hear them better with the disks held to your ears? Why do you think it worked or failed?

2. Watch:

   1. Are birds born knowing how to sing? Find out more about bird singing lessons with Partha P. Mitra and Ted-Ed.

   2. Learn about the difference between bird songs and calls with Nature Mentor.

3. Activity: Write a mini-play about summertime— with all of the characters being birds! How will you get your message across using no words?

4. Game: 

   1. Watch Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s intro video to their learning game Bird Song Hero. After you’ve played Bird Song Hero along with the video, try out the game on your own here! Does seeing a spectrogram of a bird song make it easier to identify?

   2. Bird Call Bingo: Learn about bird songs and play BINGO! Carolyn will play this live on Monday after our lesson introducing hearing ends. It will probably start around 1:30 CT. Watch it live on our Facebook page at 1pm (the feed will start automatically). After the live lesson we’ll post the link here so you can watch it later. You can watch and play along with Carolyn, OR print your own copy of the game here: Bird Call BINGO.

5. Scavenger Hunt: Listen for the alarm calls and songs of these birds: an American Crow, a Blue Jay, a Black-capped Chickadee, and an American Robin. Bonus: listen for woodpeckers drumming on trees and other surfaces, or for the nasal call of nuthatches.

6. Nature Journal:

   1. What birds were you able to hear during your scavenger hunt? Were some harder to find than others?

   2. What are some bird sounds you are really familiar with? Were there any bird sounds you heard today that you hadn’t heard before?

   3. If you were a bird, what sounds would you make?

Wednesday

Amphibians can siiiiiing too

1. Creative: Sing like a frog! Try to mimic our native frogs using these tips from Carolyn Nixon at the Illinois Natural History Survey. Get creative if you don’t have the exact supplies suggested.

   1. Western chorus frog: Run your fingers over the teeth of a hard plastic comb.

   2. Cricket frog: Click and scrape two marbles together.

   3. Northern leopard frog: Run a wet hand over a balloon to make it squeak.

   4. Spring peeper: scrape a fingernail or a piece of chalk over a blackboard until it squeaks like a single frog, or shake a string of sleigh bells to make it sound like a group of peepers.

   5. American toad: Make a trilling sound with your voice and your tongue. 

2. Activity: Check out the Know Your Frogs page from EEK! Wisconsin and play through the audio files of their voices. After listening to each one, think of a phrase (or even a little song!) that will help you remember what they sound like. For example, you might write down an American bullfrog’s call as “rum-rum, rum-rum”. Write down a phrase for each frog or toad and keep it as a guide for yourself.

3. Watch: After getting familiar with Wisconsin frog/toad sounds by mimicking them and creating phrases and songs to help you remember their songs, test what you’ve learned by listening to a frog soundscape. A soundscape is a collection of sounds you would hear in a given location. Take a listen to this soundscape from Dewey Marsh State Natural Area and see how many frogs and toads you can hear.

4. Scavenger Hunt: Take a look at this handy calendar from the Wisconsin Wetlands Association showing what frogs you can hear by month. After finding the species you should be able to hear, ask a grownup to go to a wet area with you to listen for those frogs!

5. Nature Journal:

   1. Write about what sound you would make if you were a frog (bonus: draw yourself as a frog too!).

   2. A soundwave is a way to show sound in picture form. Go back and listen to the frog and toad sounds you thought were the most interesting, then try out drawing what you think the soundwaves would look like.

Thursday

noisy, noisy insects

1. Creative: Bring out your inner insect by making a “bug buzzer”, an activity from the National Science Teaching Association. You will need string, a small pencil/craft stick, tape, eraser caps, scrap paper, a rubber band, string, and scissors. You can find full instructions (with pictures!) here. You can also build yours live with Milcah on Thursday, July 1st at noon. Watch it live on our Facebook page at 1pm (the feed will start automatically). After the live lesson we’ll post the link here so you can watch it later.

   1. Make a wing. Cut a square out of some scrap paper that is a little thinner than the length of your pencil. Then, tape the pencil to the bottom half of the wing piece you made. Make sure to center the “wing” and tape only the sides of the wing to the pencil.

   2. Wrap the string around one end of the stick a few times. Make sure the string winds off in the opposite direction of the wing, then tape the string down.

   3. Put an eraser cap on both ends of the pencil and stretch a rubber band across the erasers.

   4. Find a clear space and swing your buzzer around by the swing in fast circles over your head or in front of you.

      1. If your buzzer doesn’t make noise, make sure your string isn’t touching the rubber band or that your rubber band isn’t twisted up.

   5. What do you think is making the sound?

2. Watch:

   1. First, join Carolyn as she talks about some noisy insects you might hear all summer and how to identify the sounds they make! 

   2. It’s officially cicada season! Listen to an entomologist explain why and how these summer bugs can get so loud.

   3. Learn who makes what sounds! Listen to all 19 bugs featured in this video and see if you can tell which sounds you hear during the day and during the night.

3. Scavenger Hunt: Listen for a grasshopper, a cricket, and a cicada. Which insects are nocturnal and which are diurnal?

4. Activity: We are all used to finding insects with our eyes, but can we do it with our ears? Go outside with a grown-up and close your eyes, listening carefully for bugs (cupping your ears or going near plants might be helpful). With your eyes open, see if you can follow the sounds you hear right to the source.

   1. Could you tell what insect you were hunting before you saw it? How could you tell?

   2. Look closely: how is the insect making the sound?

   3. If you couldn’t find any insects, why do you think that happened? Were they moving around a lot? Are they too small to see? Did they hide when you got closer?

5. Nature Journal:

   1. As we’ve learned today, bugs make sounds for many different reasons. If you were a bug, what would make you want to sing?

   2. If you could change your body to make any sounds you wanted, what would you change? What sound would you make?

Friday

Make some noise for mammals

1. Creative: Different species of bats can have a wide variation of face and ear shapes. These different shapes serve different purposes. A bat that eats insects may have huge ears that help with echolocation, and fruit-eating bats may have smaller ears and a huge nose that help them communicate with other bats. 

   1. Using paper, tape, and scissors (and hat to attach them to if you have one), make your own bat ears and think about how they change what you hear. Tip: rolling sheets of paper into cones is the easiest way to go. Does rolling the paper into long, thin cones produce a different result than short and wide cones?

2. Watch: 

   1. Learn about how many bats are able to “see” their surroundings using their voices in the video Echolocation by SciToons at Brown University.

   2. Do wolves and coyotes actually howl at the moon, or is something else going on? Find out in Why Do Wolves Howl at the Moon? from BBC Unplugged.

      1. Scientists that study wolves or coyotes often do howl surveys. By howling in different locations and listening for another howl in response, they can tell if a wolf or coyote is in the area with them. With permission from a grown-up, go outside after the sun sets and howl. Make sure not to howl as loud as you can— if a wolf or coyote hears a howl too close to them, they will think someone else is in the territory and will not respond. Do you hear anyone howling back to you? Do you think they are domestic dogs or coyotes? (Bonus: Use the UW Urban Canid Project’s iNaturalist page to see where coyotes and wolves have been spotted around Madison! Are there any points near you?)

3. Activity:

   1. Let’s play Bat & Moth, a game about echolocation! Find an open space to play in (preferably a place where you can’t bump into or break anything). You will need at least two people to play— one person as the bat, and one person as the moth. After the bat and moth put on blindfolds. the game can start. The bat claps once as a call, and the moth claps back twice as a response. The person playing the role of bat will use the sound of the moth clapping a response to track them down. Meanwhile, the moth must try to avoid being caught.

      1. What does the bat’s single clap represent? What about the moth’s two-clap response?

      2. What senses did you rely on most during the game?

4. Scavenger Hunt: Listen for all the different sounds squirrels make— vocalizing, the sounds they make when they eat, walnuts falling, and the sound of them shuffling through leaves.

5. Nature Journal: 

   1. Draw yourself with bat ears and write about why you chose your ear shape.

   2. What if wolves or coyotes sang at the moon instead of howled? What would their songs sound like? Write a song you’d want to hear from them!

6. Sit Spot: Visit your sit spot and write down all the different sounds you hear. Then, look back at what you wrote on Monday. Did you hear anything new today that you didn’t hear on Monday? Are there sounds that you heard both on Monday and today? Why do you think that is?

Banner photo: Cottontail rabbits by Laura Wolf (Flickr Creative Commons).