How do humans use sound and light to communicate? The Crosscutting Concepts of Cause and Effect and Patterns are featured prominently in this unit as students explore how vibrating materials cause sound and the presence of light enables them to see. The unit begins by introducing the students to the design challenge, to create a shadow puppet show by engineering a musical instrument out of recycled materials and making shadow puppets. Before building the instrument, students learn how vibrations become sound, sounds are made of vibrations and sound can cause materials to vibrate. Next, the students learn how to incorporate pitch and volume into their instruments and consider how to create rhythm.

Next, students design a tool to send sound across the room and learn how humans use devices to communicate over a long distance. Students are introduced to technology used for this purpose and use coding to communicate to a partner about a design for a shadow puppet. Students apply their knowledge of sound to design a musical instrument that they will use in their shadow puppet show.

Finally, students explore light, darkness, and shadows to figure out that light is needed for us to see and that light interacts with objects to create shadows. They investigate how changing materials or changing distance between the light source and the object changes the shadow. They apply this knowledge to design their shadow puppet and the unit culminates in a puppet show where students put on a show using the instruments and puppets they designed in order to communicate a story to their class.