- building blocks
- small wooden spoons or other dowel-like objects
- big
- block
- cylinder
- rectangle
- square
- tap
MA Standards:
English Language Arts/Language/L.PK.MA.6 Use words and phrases acquired through conversations, listening to books read aloud, activities, and play.
MA Draft STE Standards:
Physical Sciences/Matter and Its Interactions/PS4.A Investigate different sounds made by different objects and different materials and reason about what is making the sounds. [Cause and Effect]
Head Start Outcomes:
Logic and Reasoning/Symbolic Representation Represents people, places, or things through drawings, movement, and three-dimensional objects.
Science Knowledge/Scientific Skills and Method Uses senses and tools, including technology, to gather information, investigate materials, and observe processes and relationships.
PreK Learning Guidelines:
Science and Technology/Inquiry Skills 1 Ask and seek out answers to questions about objects and events with the assistance of interested adults.
Block Percussion Center
© Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Department of Early Education and Care (Jennifer Waddell photographer). All rights reserved.
Skill Focus: Hand-Eye Coordination, Vocabulary
Tell children they are going to be percussionists just like the little girl in My Family Plays Music. Invite children to lightly tap the blocks with the wooden spoons. Ask, Does the shape or size of the blocks make the sound different? Does the place where you hit them make the sound different? What if you tap them softly? What about hard?
English Language Learners: Say aloud the vocabulary terms block and tap. Ask children to repeat the terms after you. Have children to point to the block and name it for you again. Then have them tap it as they say the word tap.