The five senses of sight, smell, touch, taste and hearing, are our windows to this world. We understand the world around us through these senses. Teaching the kids about the five senses is a good way to help them understand their bodies. Multi-sensory activities aid to develop the nerve connections in the child's brain’, leading to enhancement in the child’s ability to complete more complex learning tasks. Sensory play activities support development of language, cognitive abilities, fine and gross motor skills, problem solving skills, and social interaction. Let us see how we can have fun with sense of hearing based activities. You can see all our posts on the five senses here.
How do we hear?
This superb video explains the mechanism of hearing in the human ear. This can be explained in an age appropriate way with explanations ranging from "we hear with our ears" to the more elaborate outer ear, inner ear details.
How much do we hear?
The pitch of a sound is due to its frequency - and humans can detect sounds in a frequency range from about 20 Hz to 20 kHz (= 20,000 Hz). Infants can hear frequencies even slightly higher than 20 kHz, but this sensitivity is lost with time. Average adults can hear up to 15–17 kHz. This video is fun to be watched with kids, often then can hear what we are unable to hear, and it amuses them!
Hearing in Animals
The basic fact of this range of hearing issue to be told to kids is that different animals can hear different ranges of sound frequencies. Cats can detect frequencies from 55 Hz up to 79 kHz while dogs have a range of hearing that is usually around 67 Hz to 45 kHz. So they can all hear sounds we can't hear. Bats have a hearing range of about 15 kHz to 90 kHz, but some can detect as high as 200 kHz.
Bats navigate around objects and locate their prey using echolocation or biosonar, which is their ability to emit sounds and then listen to the echoes of those sounds bouncing off the surrounding objects. Here is an amazing informative video about how bats navigate in the dark.
Sounds animals make
For some common animals, preschool children are taught the English names for their sounds. However, children find it very interesting to know the real the sounds of animals. Here are two videos with sounds of animals and birds.
Sound activities for small kids
Variety of sounds
You can explore the different sounds made by objects made of different materials using a stick. The child also learns how objects made of same material but different sizes make different sounds like the steel bowls in the picture below.
Musical Glasses
Line up 5 glasses next to each other and fill them with different amounts of water. Add some food colouring to spark more interest! Hit each with a spoon and listen. This is a good way to teach kids about the pitch of sound. The child learns how the pitch of sound varies with different levels of water in glasses. Older kids can try to make tunes with them.
Sound recognition game
Make 4 pairs of different colored Gems chocolate balls (hollow plastic balls) filled with 4 different objects. Ask the child to shake each ball and find its pair which makes the same sound. You can use coins, moong dal (a lentil), pasta and chickpeas. You can increase the number of pairs for an older kid.
Worksheets
You can also do worksheet activities related to hearing and sense of sound. There are many free worksheets available on various sites for teaching resources.
You can also download our sense of hearing activity sheets from your Subscriber's Page. If you are not yet a subscriber, do subscribe to get access to all the Free Worksheets we have!
Keyboard Activities
If you have a keyboard at home, it is a great source of auditory exploration for a child. Explore the 7 musical notes, play a tune, have fun!
Beginner Level: Small kids can learn a few nursery rhymes on keyboards. Check out this video.
Advanced: This is a great website to teach to kids a few songs on a keyboard: Free Piano Lessons (true-piano-lessons.com)
Ability/Disability: What is hearing loss?
An important aspect of teaching about any ability is also to make the child understand about any related disability and to make them sensitive towards the challenges faced by people with disabilities and how we can be inclusive in our actions and behavior. Equally crucial is to make children understand the concept of accessibility.
The disability related to the sense of hearing is deafness. Apart from deafness, there are other types of hearing problems like auditory processing disorders.
👉 If you yourself are not very aware about different aspects of deafness, I would recommend this video for adults to know more about deafness. How to communicate with people who have hearing loss (deaf awareness) - YouTube
For older children, I recommend this video Understanding Deafness - Educational Video - YouTube
For small kids, I would recommend, that you update yourself and explain to them giving the example of people (probably an elderly person) you may know, who are hard of hearing. You can show them parts of the videos above to explain how sign language looks like and how they should support people who are hard of hearing.
A "Sign Language" is a method with which deaf people can communicate using a combination of gestures, body language and facial expressions.
What is Indian Sign Language? Indian Sign Language (ISL) is the natural language of the Deaf Communities in India. It is a full-fledged language on par with spoken languages. ISL has its own vocabulary and grammatical structures which are different from all spoken languages used in India. [Source-- NIOS- https://www.nios.ac.in/media/documents/230-ISL/ISL-230-Curriculum.pdf]
We are filled with pride that Indian Sign Language has recently been included as a language subject in the Indian curriculum.
This will enable greater inclusiveness and accessibility in our society, and enable access to mainstream education for millions of deaf children in India. You can know more about Indian Sign Language in our Facebook Group where we are celebrating International Day of Sign Languages on 23rd September.
I do recommend that you watch the video below and show your child how we say "Hello", "Bye", "Thank you", and "India" in Indian Sign Language.
Even humans can echolocate
This is related to blindness, but it is an inspiring video, that shows how hearing can construct the image of the world around blind people, when their vision does not. To me it also conveys the immense human potential and how challenges can be overcome.
Music
One of the most beautiful aspect of having hearing ability is music. Music not just makes kids happy, it is known to enhance their cognitive abilities. Play music, make music and enjoy music, and cherish this wonderful sense that we have. I end here with a favorite song of mine to teach kids about musical notes. I hope you enjoyed the post and the worksheet!
Don't forget to download our sense of hearing activity sheets from your Subscriber's Page. If you are not yet a subscriber, subscribe here to get access to all the Free Worksheets we have!
