Good Vibrations

Supplies††

• Dominoes, 1 handful per child ††
• Musical instrument ††
• 8 glass jars, such as Mason jars ††
• Water ††
• 8 metal spoons ††
• Optional: Food coloring ††
• Design Card—Ear, 1 per child (11-3-079, available from answersbookstore.com)

Class Time Directions

Today, we’ve been talking about our ears and how we need to have ears that listen to God’s Word. Did you know our ears help us keep our balance? In our inner ears, we have semicircular canals. These are tubes in a semicircle that contain fluid that moves along the tubes. When we move, the fluid moves, and this helps us know our position. There are tiny hairs that detect movement inside these tubes. These hairs transmit signals to our brain that interprets the signals and helps the rest of our body know how to move in order to stay balanced. It’s an amazing system that could have been designed only by our all-wise Creator God. We can praise Him for creating our amazing ears!

Give each child a handful of dominoes and have them carefully set them up in a line so they’ll end up creating a chain reaction (knocking the line over) when the first one is touched. Once they have the dominoes in place, have the kids sit still for a minute as you say the following, then they’ll knock the first one over on your signal.

Have you ever heard musicians talk about good vibrations? Take responses. That’s a saying that means the music sounds and feels good to them. But for music to sound good, it really does have to have good vibrations. Does anyone know what vibrations are? Take responses. All sounds are made of vibrations. Here’s how it works.

On an instrument (e.g., guitar, piano), play a note in progressively higher (or lower) octaves. Ask everyone if they can hear the sound change. Now ask everyone to cover their ears, and repeat the musical notes. Explain that the great difference in sound is because the vibrations in the air cannot reach the eardrum to produce the sound. Then ask them if they could still hear some sound with their ears covered. Explain that even though the vibrations in the air could not reach the ear drum, the bones in the skull can pick up some vibration and transmit it to the ear!

When you make a sound, like knocking on a door or playing the piano, the air vibrates, or moves quickly back and forth. That creates something like a domino effect.

Give them the signal to knock the first domino over and watch it in turn affect the whole line being knocked down.

Just like one domino moved a little and knocked the next domino, which knocked the next domino, and so on, sound starts at one spot, where the air is moving back and forth quickly (vibrating), which then causes the air a little farther away to start vibrating, and then the air a little farther away from that to start vibrating, and so on until it reaches your ear. Once it reaches your ear, the shaking air causes those little hairs to start moving inside your ear, which causes a message to be sent to your brain. It’s like saying, “Hey, there, brain, here comes a message for you to figure out!” And our brains are such amazing creations of God, they’re able to interpret all those different air vibrations into the various sounds we recognize.

Let’s see if we can set up our very own musical band to hear some good vibrations! We’ll put water and a little food coloring in each jar. The jars need to have different amounts of water so they’ll make different sounds. Let’s try to figure out how to arrange them so the sounds start low and continue to get higher.

Let the kids play with the water amounts until the jars are arranged from the least amount of water to the most. Then hand out metal spoons and take turns gently hitting the jars to hear the sounds. Try making up a simple song, like “Happy Birthday.”

Being able to hear sounds is really an amazing creation of God! Thank God if you are able to hear sounds! Some people aren’t able to hear sounds because something in their ears isn’t working quite right, so they need to learn to read lips or use sign language.

Everyone may not be able to physically hear sounds, but everyone is able to spiritually hear if they will listen. What do you think I mean by that? Take responses. God has given us this most amazing book ever that contains His very words to us. He is wise and wants us to live wisely, too. He has given us many good principles to live by, such as the wisdom sayings in the book of Proverbs. Many of them even start by saying, “Listen, my son . . . .” God really wants us to listen to His Word because if we listen and do what it says, we will live our life on the wise path. It will make all the difference in the world.

Pass out the Design Card—Ear, one for each child.