Harmonicas

In Year 5, we made harmonicas.  A harmonica is a wind blown instrument. When you blow or draw air through a harmonica, the reeds inside the harmonica vibrate to produce sound.

Our initial discussions linked to the 'Sound' Science unit we covered in Year 4 and the 'Forces' unit we are currently completing.  We recapped how sounds are made through vibrations.  When experimenting with using our harmonicas, we found that by shortening the distance between the straws, the pitch changed.  This is because the space for the air to vibrate is reduced and therefore there is a higher frequency of vibration.

When making our harmonicas, we found that we used our Maths skills of measuring alongside our DT skills in combining materials.

After making our harmonicas, we created storage boxes for them.  We linked this to our typography unit in Art and our DT objectives relating to consideration of aesthetics alongside functionality.

Finally, we used our ICT word processing skills to create a set of instructions in Word.  We had to think back to our Literacy Instructions unit in Year 4 to remember all of the features of this type of writing.

It was a fun day jam packed with learning experiences!