Peripole Presents: Integrating Music and Science, a Musical Exploration Series

Peripole is proud to announce the rejuvenation of a Peripole exclusive project created in 1960 entitled “SOUND: Activity Guides for the Music and Science Programs” involving the teaching of sound in the elementary and junior high science curriculum through its application to music.  This original program was created with the help of special consultants Dr. Charles T. Horn and Mack Perry to provide students the opportunity to investigate the nature and characteristics of sound.

This new updated version of the series will draw on the original ideas and structure of experimenting with materials to examine how vibrations make sound, how sound travels, how different instruments produce musical sound, and how sound is reproduced.

In selecting materials for the original program, meticulous care and consideration was involved in making certain that some mechanical aspects had to be controlled while others made variables.  Only with such necessary controlled and variable factors could there be proper conclusions.

From the children themselves, we will get clues for using these materials.  Children are curious about the things they see and handle, about the sounds they hear and the people they meet.  They raise questions about their experiences and seek answers to their questions by making hunches, by experimenting on their own, by asking other children and adults, and by reading.  Thus, children’s natural curiosity leads them to use elements of the scientific method as a way of working -- the making of hypotheses and the gathering of data as they seek answers to their questions.  Later they learn to project these conclusions to solve hypothetical problems.

Children’s experiences and the questions they ask are the raw material and the motivating forces of learning.  The materials referenced in this series help children to have experiences with sound and to raise questions about how sound is made.  They are intended for use at all grade levels.  The activity guides suggest specific ways in which individual children and groups of children might use the materials.

We can’t wait to share this new series with all of you.  Stay tuned for regularly updated series content available only from Peripole!