Dad's involvement in homeschool

The title of this post sounds so serious, but you might chuckle a little when you read this post.

Since in our unit study, we are learning about Attentiveness, Listening, Ears, & Sound, Michael suggested that we read a great article in one of his hunting magazines.
The article is called "The Ears Have It" written by Dr. Phillip Bishop who is an avid hunter professor at University of Alabama (which, of course, gave me even more interest in the article).
I must say it was a very interesting article. It was easy to understand, and when the terminology was a little hard for the boys to grasp, I was able to stop and explain to them (terms like "frequency" and "amplitude"). The most interesting part was the fact that a deer's ears are always moving trying to catch sound. In this particular article, the author was explaining why a deer can hear the squeak of a deer stand, the breaking of a small twig, but it gets confused by the close, loud bang of a gun. And we were even able to feel a deer ear! Of course having one on the wall is a plus!

The subject of deer and how they listen fit perfectly with our attentiveness study.
If deer don't pay close attention at all times, they could get shot!

Way to go daddy!

Sound experiments

Today we read a book called Amazing Science Amazing Sound. It discusses how sound travels through different mediums. We conducted several experiments to go with our study.

1. Identified sounds going on around us
2. Cup hand around ears; sound is magnified
3. Discussed vibrations. Clapped loudly & quietly. Loud sounds are made by large vibrations, whereas quieter sounds are made by small vibrations.
4. Felt the voice box while making high and low pitches
5. Sound waves travel through water. We created our own waves in a bowl of water.
6. Bounced a ball off the wall to see how an echo works. Our voice bounces back off the wall just like a ball. (When you shout in a cave, your voice bounces off the walls, and you hear an echo)
7. My favorite experiment was the sound in action experiment. You get a coffee tin can, stretch plastic wrap tightly over the top. Sprinkle coffee grounds lightly on top of the plastic wrap. As you bang another coffee can with a spoon (the open tin can pointing toward the coffee grains), the coffee grains jump. This proves that sound travels in waves because nothing but the sound is causing those grains to jump.
8. Discussed how a shorter string on a musical instrument (we used Justin's guitar) produces a higher pitch. A longer string produces a lower pitch.
9. We also watched 4 Cello performances on YouTube. We watched and discussed how the Cello players produced higher and lower pitches with their instruments as we watched their hands move on the neck of the Cello.

Here is another interesting experiment with high pitched sounds(using sand) that we watched: