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Growing Young Minds

At Nurtured at Home, we embrace the values of manaakitia te whenua – caring for our environment by reducing, reusing and recycling.  Here’s a great science activity for children, using recyclable materials:

Activity: Bottle Music

Materials Needed:

5 identical plastic bottles

Water

What to Do:

Fill the plastic bottles with varying amounts of water.  Arrange the bottles in order from most to least full.  Then blow across the top of each bottle to compare the different sounds you make.

What’s Happening: 

Changing the amounts of air and water in the bottles lets you change the pitch—how high or low the sound is.  When you blow across the tops of the bottles, you are making the air inside vibrate.  In bottles with more air, vibrations are slower, so the pitch is lower.

Additional Features:

You can also colour the water using the natural dye from flower petals soaked in hot water, or you can add a few drops of food colouring.  Using recyclable glass bottles with a narrow neck also works well, as do larger glass jars and you can use a teaspoon to gently tap the side of the jar to create the sound.