Sound Effects Handout: Parents, Take-Home

Your child has been learning about sound waves in class. To help them understand, the class has been using the example of sound effects, such as the type used in old radio programs to imitate real life sounds like rain or horses walking. The class saw what different sounds looked like as waves and what made them different. They also saw how sound effects and the matching real life sounds look similar.

As a take-home activity, your child has been asked to create a sound effect from everyday items to match this sound wave:

The sound your child makes should be about the same loudness and pitch as is suggested by the picture of the wave. In class, the students learned how amplitude, or the height of the wave, shows how loud a sound is. Louder sounds have a taller amplitude. They also learned how pitch is represented by the wavelength, or how far apart each rise or fall of the wave is from the next one. A high pitch sound has waves that are very close together. A low pitch sound is spread out and wide. The sound they are making should be low-pitched and pretty quiet, but be able to be repeated, like a light rumbling.

Help your child find things he or she could use to make the effect. Things you can find that make good sound effects are: hollow cans or boxes filled with smaller stuff, bags or paper that you can wave or shake, objects made of different stuff you can rub together, or anything else you can think of!