Secret sounds game

Here's a game that builds listening skills and encourages your child to think about cause and effect. This game can be played with friends at a party or by an adult and child on a quiet day.

Here's how to play:

1. Fill a box or bag with noise-making items. These items can be instruments, but many should simply be random household objects that can be used to make sounds, such as a comb, salad tongs, a thick book, containers and markers with lids that pop, a box of paperclips, scissors, spoons, a whisk, and so forth.
2. In a party or playdate situation, children take turns being the noisemaker and the listeners. Listeners sit facing away from the noisemaker while the noisemaker creates a mystery sound with one of the props.
3. Listeners try to guess what is making the mystery sound. The listener who guesses correctly gets to be the next noisemaker. (An adult and child can simply take turns making the mystery sound and guessing.)