Drawing or sculpting sounds

Let the children listen to some sounds. These can be environmental sounds, sounds that the children make themselves with objects from the classroom or objects that they bring themselves - these are not musical instruments, but everyday objects that you can roll, tap, rub, ... to make a sound.

You can also use the sounds from our project Geluidenatlas (here you can listen to the 40 sounds separately) or excerpts from Start To Listen.

Ask students to draw the sounds. It is important that they do not try to draw the source of the sound, but the sound itself:

• What shape does the sound have?
• What colour does it have?
• Is it thick or thin?
• Also try to reflect on the location/direction/movement of the sounds.
• Can you combine different drawings to make a graphic score?

Ask the children to imagine the sound as something you can feel or touch and let them recreate that imaginary object with the clay and/or other material. This seems like an abstract exercise, but let everyone imagine, craft and puzzle. They will come to a result.

When everyone has finished their (clay) sculpture, the children can start touching each other's work. Try to get them to describe as precisely as possible the similarities and differences between the works.