I had no clue how well or not well this idea would work with my 23 month old, I have done it with 3- 5 year olds in the past but never with toddlers. It was a huge hit. He understood the chart and that we were listening to for the things listed and got very excited to earn each star! We chose to go for a walk in our neighborhood but you can do this inside or in your backyard too!

  1. Gather your materials. You will need some construction paper, plain paper, markers, a ruler, scissors, stickers and glue or double stick tape.
  2. Make a simple chart , one space for the sound you are searching for and a small box for a sticker or a check mark.
  3. Add things you hear often around your neighborhood or where ever you will be listening. We did sirens, dogs barking, birds, cars, etc…
  4. Tape or glue the paper on the construction paper and head off on your walk.
  5. I gave the chart to my son and told him we were looking for all those sounds, we talked about hearing things, and although he was quite convinced we hear with our eyes, he still got it.
  6. I helped start things off my closing the garage door and asking him what he heard. when he said the garage door , I asked him to look on his chart to see if that was on it. When it was we got a sticker and put it in the box.
  7. The next up was our neighbors barking dogs! Then birds… we were only a few hundred feet from our door and we already had half the items on our safari.

As we kept walking we found more and my son pointed out ones we didn’t have like the lawnmowers the gardeners were using. That tickled me because that was the point of this whole exercise to learn about using our ears to hear and identify sounds. These were our final safari findings:
Books!


” Sounds Funny”
and ” Sounds Tough” by Kevin Somers are exactly the type of books I have been looking for. They have super fun illustrations that dominate the pages, and the text is simply the sound that the pictures would make. A perfect way to engage young preschoolers and toddlers about sound. Also I found it rather interesting that the motorcycle sound in ” Sounds Tough” is ” Na Na Na” since my son calls motorcycles nanas. maybe he knows something I don’t! Either way there are many books about how sound works and the five senses that are far too complicated for really little guys, these books are perfect!

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