Sound Awareness and Creative Thinking

These games will help to grow the brains of infants and toddlers. Whether it’s through singing, dancing, cuddling, rocking, talking, smelling, or tasting, you can encourage the pathways of their brains to make new connections.

Learning Objective- Awareness of Sound

This game is like a scavenger hunt. Talk about all the different kinds of sounds you can listen to and try to find examples of these sounds.

Crunchy, funny, terrible, scary, scratchy, buzzing, humming, a sound that starts and stops, and metal sounds.

Here are some ideas to start with.
Carrot for crunching
Scary sound with your voice
A buzzing toy
Two metal spoons
Slide whistle

Pick up one of the objects and make the sound. When you make the sound, give the descriptive word.
“Oh, that is a loud sound.”

Take a walk outside and see what sounds you can identify.

Things to do to take this activity to the next level:
For building confidence - “Can you make your voice sound happy?”

For developing the idea - “You make wonderful happy sounds. Can a bird make a happy sound? Can a dog make a happy sound?" Continue asking about different animals and different sounds.

For moving forward - “I’m going to make a sound. See if you can tell what it is. (make a sound of a cat. Now you make a sound and I’ll see if I can tell what it is.” There’s a good chance that the child will copy your sound. That’s normal and should be expected.

Learning Objective – Creative thinking
A favorite song with toddlers is “Old MacDonald Had a Farm.” They love to make the animal sounds.

Talk about other kinds of places Old MacDonald could go. The children will tell you things based on their families.

Try singing the song using other ideas.

Old MacDonald had a cold, e,i,e,i,o
And with his cold he had a cough. Etc.

Think of sounds you have with a cold.

Old MacDonald could also have a yard, a house, a candy store, etc. Changing the words will develop vocabulary.

Things to do to take this activity to the next level:
For building confidence – “ Let’s sing Old MacDonald together.”

For developing the idea - “If Old MacDonald had a candy store, what kind of candy would he have in the store?”

For moving forward - “Let’s sing Old MacDonald had a car and make up sounds of the car.”

An excellent book to read for this activity is Old MacDonald in the City by Suzanne Williams.

Recommended Items:
Watch Me Crawl Tunnel (GOBABY)
Giant Plush Stacking Ring (TALLRING)
The Complete Book of Rhymes, Songs, Poems, Fingerplays and Chants (RHYMES)