Sense-ational Science Day 1

We started with a Name Game to learn each other’s names. Today we focused on the sense of hearing. We discussed echolocation and played a game called Sonar Swim. 3-4 campers were blindfolded "whales" and the rest were obstacles in the ocean. Kind of like Marco Polo the whales called out and the obstacles responded. The goal was to get to the other side using only your sense of hearing to avoid any obstacles.

Then we talked about what sound is, the different parts of our ear and looked at some animals and how their ears compare or differ to ours. They designed, made and used paper ears to find each other by listening for their unique "animal family" calls.

We also discussed how some animals can move their ears in different directions to know which way a sound is coming from and that two ears help us and animals locate the source of a sound. To demonstrate this, in pairs, they used a tube from ear to ear, wrapped around the back of their head and their partner tapped on the tube, while they had to guess which side the sound was coming from.

We also talked about wacky animal ears (like dolphins, frogs and crickets). Then we took a snack break, wrote some of their play they will perform Friday and went to the obstacle course.

Back at the classroom, we discussed Physicist-musician Ernst Chladni who came up with a way to use sand to reveal the pattern of sound vibrations on a surface in 1787 and they chose a musical note to vibrate onto the Chladni plate and record on paper. Each note makes a unique vibration and thus pattern in the sand.

We also played a string maze game (one partner blindfolded has to listen to the other partner tell them how to get through the string maze without touching a string).

Then I had them spread out and find their own spot in nature and they recorded 5 things they could see, 4 things they could hear, 3 things they could feel, 2 things they could smell and 1 thing they could taste and shared out their findings.

Then we did a Sound relay (in teams they had to find their matching sounds made from mystery objects in tin cans). After lunch, we went to explore and play at the creek. Some campers caught whirligig beetles or fish and others made clay pots from the creek clay. Then at dismissal there was volleyball 4 square, archery, basketball and other games.