Sound Check: Considerations for Auditory Environments

“I first began thinking about sound when I was a young child. I am noise sensitive and did not like school. The cafeteria and hallways were painfully noisy places, but I loved my first-grade teacher’s voice. I recall watching her lips move and soaking in her warm voice without paying attention to a thing she was saying. It was the tone of her voice that anchored me and made me feel safe in a big public school,” writes Carol Garboden Murray, in an article on the soundscape of early childhood.

Exploring how sound affects us, Garboden Murray offers questions and insights to reflect on vocal volume and tone, creating auditory zones, being mindful of how often we give directions, and strategies for using total communication, songs and chants, and even silence. Garboden Murray concludes, “By being intentional designers of the soundscape in our early childhood communities, we can offer rare places that are set apart from the sound cluttered world.”

Consider the auditory environment where you spend your days and become more in tune with the impact of sound on both children and adults, with the Exchange Reflections, “The Soundscape of Early Childhood,” based on Garboden Murray’s article of the same name.

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