Let’s play a game! Silent or Loud Sound Game helps child with their sense of hearing but the game also help children to listen more carefully and pay attention. Hope your child will also enjoy this game!
Does this happen to you: everyone shouting at home, you can hardly hear your own thoughts?! Oh, yes! I know exactly how it sounds!
Sometimes it’s hard to explain to toddlers to keep their volume a bit lower. And sometimes I have a feeling my kids don’t even know how to speak in low, soft voice!
Because of this, I have come up with a little game to teach my toddler a difference between silent and loud.
How to Prepare Silent or Loud Sound Game?
Silent or Loud Sound Game is extremely easy to prepare and it’s very flexible. In reality, you really don’t need anything from the store for this game! Chances are you have everything you need right at your home!
Items I used for this sound game are:
- 3 egg cartons, simply because I had them at home! One to hold all items and another 2 for sorting silent and loud items. If you don’t have egg cartons, you can use any container but what I love about egg cartons is that kids can use small egg holes to practice their fine motor skills!
- 1 metal tin, we used candy tin we had on hand, empty of course. Candies long gone!
- 2 pieces of paper with words “silent” and “loud”, although toddlers can’t read at this age, it’s always a good thing to expose them to pictures of words.
- 30 random small items from around the home. This is why I said that this game is very flexible: you can use whatever you have at home. There are only 2 things to have in mind: keep items smaller than a container you’ll use to create sounds, and use a variety of items in terms of materials!
You can see our setup right here. We tried to keep it simple! In reality, I have put together this game in less than 5 minutes because everything used is either from recycle bin or laying around the home.
Random Items We Used to Make Sounds
Here is the list of items we used to make sounds for this game:
- water beads,
- plastic beads,
- wooden beads,
- wooden blocks,
- felt hearts,
- beer tops,
- small erasers,
- cotton balls,
- jingle bells,
- coins,
- silly bands,
- pom poms,
- chenille stems,
- dice,
- rice,
- foam stickers,
- small bouncy ball,
- barley,
- beans,
- tissue paper,
- small gummy animal,
- glass marble,
- toothpicks,
- hair band,
- buttons,
- pasta,
- chestnut / concker
- cork.
Let’s Play Silent or Loud Sound Game!
And this is how we played Silent or loud sound game:
- I invited my toddler to pick an item from the pile and ask her to name it if she can. If she didn’t know the name, I would tell the name and invite her to repeat it after me.
- Next I asked her: “What do you think, will ____ make loud or silent sound?” as she was placing the item in a tin. She would make a guess and in some occasions she was right! In others, she was a bit surprised!
- As a last step, she would place it in an egg carton with loud or silent items, depending on sound that item created in a metal tin.
We repeated the process all over again until we went through all the items! It takes a while but kids don’t mind because they are having so much fun.
My toddler really enjoyed playing this game. After all, who wouldn’t like to be invited to make some noise?! And mom enjoyed seeing how much she loves it because we learned about so many new things today:
- she learned some new words she previously never used (expanding vocabulary),
- she used her fingers to transfer even tiny items like beans and rice from egg carton to tin and back to egg carton, working on her fine motor skills,
- we learned how sounds can be very different depending on materials.
This is a great little game to play with toddlers at home or at kindergarten / day care center. Hope you will try it with your toddlers because it’s really fun and easy to prepare and yet, toddlers can learn so much by playing this game!
Our Favorite Animal Sounds Books
Your little one can press 30 different sound buttons and hear how each of the farm animals sound while you read the book aloud for them. You will have fun imitating the animals as well! Find the book here: United States | Canada | United Kingdom
Similar to Farm animals sound book, this sound book also includes 30 animal themed sound buttons (this time wild animals) to press making Hear Bear Roar an amazing and interactive adventure! Find the book here: United States | Canada | United Kingdom
WHAT TO DO NEXT?
- Pick our free Sensory Play e-book and learn more about benefits of sensory play for your child!
- Learn about auditory sensory system.
- Sing nursery rhymes and enjoy related activities!
Such a cute idea for the littles! I love how you’ve incorporated asking the kids what they think the sounds will be like.
Guessing makes this game even more fun! 🙂
This looks amazing! I am an early childhood special ed teacher and this week I want to talk about music and sound with my students. This is a perfect science activity! Thank you so much for sharing!