Year 4 Exploring Pitch & Volume Activities

Explore the Musical Science of Sound with Five Creative Investigations

Transform your Year 4 Science and Music lessons with this exciting resource featuring five hands-on activities that help students investigate pitch and volume, create their own instruments, and discover the patterns that govern how sounds are made.

Five Complete Activities Included:

1. Discover Shakers: Create and investigate homemade shakers using different materials! Children explore how the contents affect the volume and quality of sound, learning about vibrations and sound production through musical experimentation
2. Water Xylophone: Build a musical instrument from glasses and water! Students discover how the amount of water affects pitch, finding patterns between the volume of water and the note produced—a memorable way to understand pitch
3. Investigating String Sounds: Explore how string instruments work by investigating how the length, thickness, and tension of strings affect the pitch of sounds they produce—developing understanding through hands-on experimentation
4. Exploring Pitch: Conduct systematic investigations into what makes sounds high or low, discovering patterns between pitch and the physical properties of sound-producing objects
5. Exploring The Volume Of Sound: Investigate what makes sounds loud or quiet! Children explore the relationship between the strength of vibrations and volume, and discover how distance affects the loudness of sounds we hear

Why Teachers Choose This Resource:

• Curriculum-Aligned: Fully supports Year 4 Science objectives for Sound and KS2 Music objectives for pitch and dynamics
• Hands-On Music Making: Children create real instruments and make music while learning science—engaging and memorable
• Ready to Use: Complete lesson plans with learning objectives, equipment lists, and step-by-step instructions
• Pattern Recognition: Activities develop scientific thinking by finding patterns between variables
• Simple Materials: Uses everyday items like glasses, water, string, and containers
• Cross-Curricular Excellence: Seamlessly combines Science and Music learning objectives

Perfect For:

• Year 4 Science lessons on Sound
• KS2 Music lessons exploring pitch and dynamics
• Homeschool science and music curriculum
• STEM learning and creative investigations
• Developing scientific enquiry skills through music
• Building understanding of how musical instruments work

Learning Outcomes:

Through these activities, children will find patterns between the pitch of a sound and features of the object that produced it, find patterns between the volume of a sound and the strength of the vibrations that produced it, understand how different instruments produce different pitches, and develop the ability to predict and test how changing variables affects sound.

What Makes This Resource Special:

These activities don't just teach about pitch and volume—they let children discover the science of sound through creating and playing their own instruments. This combination of music-making and scientific investigation makes learning engaging, memorable, and genuinely fun while developing both scientific and musical understanding.

Bring the joy of musical science to your classroom! These creative investigations help Year 4 students understand the physics of pitch and volume through exciting hands-on experiments that combine music, science, and discovery in ways that will have them talking about their learning long after the lesson ends.