What can we hear? - Drawing to sounds

On Wednesday I gathered some children around me and asked them to be very quiet. I explained that I had some special sounds for them on a CD. It took a little while until everyone stopped talking but then finally the room was quiet. Then I turned on the sounds;
first we listen to the sound of an old fashioned toilet flush and the children were wondering what the sound was. When I played it a second time Sam said "it's water" and Taylor added "it's running water", so I asked the children were they can hear running water like this. Everyone was thinking and suggested different things until Anita finally got the answer "a toilet flush".

Then I handed out some paper and coloured pencils and explained that we were going to draw the sounds that we were hearing onto the paper.
The next sound was a loud humming noise and everyone knew immediately "it's a bee!"
So we all started to draw a bee on our paper. We were just finished when we heard the next sound "that's a frog" I could hear everyone saying before it got quiet again and they all concentrated on drawing a frog. Then we heard a horse, a cat and a whole Farmyard (were most of the children recognized the pig first) and then it got a bit trickier again.
The sound went "knock, knock, knock - screak - slam". Taylor asked "Tanja, can you play it again?" So I played it again and then Taylor and Sam found out at the same time "it's a door". Then we listen to a kind of strange sound but it was definitely the most interesting one of today: a .... - wait, listen yourself:



Uh, that was pretty scary but everyone wanted to hear it again.

Then we listened to a car horn and a train which were much easier to guess and then our papers were full of pictures so we decided to just keep quiet for a little bit longer and to listen very carefully to the surroundings - could we hear the wind blow or the Tui sing in the tree or the children playing outside? Yes, and we even heard another toilet flush :-)



Well done everybody - that was great work!!!
I was very happy to see how quiet and concentrated they all mastered this challenge. All of them seemed very confident in recognising the sounds and they all showed a great awareness of the world around them by putting the sound into drawing.