Wired for Sound

I still own one of these ancient relics:

Don't ask. It did, however, inspire my science lesson for the day. We're reviewing the senses and this time around learning to name all the parts. Today was hearing. The discussion began by learning about sound waves and the parts of the ear. Naturally, the kids fought over who could be the hammer and who could be the anvil. Naturally, they all acted out both. After building a crude model of the ear using a funnel and some wax paper, it was time for my inspired project.

Of course, my project also required one of these:

When I asked my dear husband to pick up a blank one at Wal-Mart last week, he looked at me like I was from the Dark Ages. (Which I am if you qualify the wonderful '80s as the Dark Ages.) How should I know that they've discontinued even carrying these for the stray old person who may still own a cassette player like mine? It's not like I've been looking for blank tapes, so I didn't know they DON'T still exist. Anyway...I had to rob our stash of mixed tapes. (Yes, we still have some of our old Mixed Tapes even if we don't have anything to play them on. Except for my trusty tape recorder pictured above.)

So I popped in the mixed tape and explained my inspired project to the kids. I opened the door to the backyard and sent them out, a smile on my face, thinking about the joy they would experience as they captured the sounds of nature on tape: a bird tweeting, leaves rustling, a cricket chirping. What did they record? Themselves yelling. Then they came inside and recorded songs from CDs (and, yes, the sound quality is sooo pleasant emanating at high volume from that tape recorder). Then it was on to more of themselves, only this time they were actors and quoted lines from movies they have seen a hundred million times. As the novelty began to wear off, they requested a show...and proceeded to record Word Girl over my mixed tape (Word Girl was itself recorded on DVR--sound AND picture).

So I ask myself two questions at the end of this project:

1. Why did I give the kids a CD player for Christmas when they would have been much happier with a tape recorder?

2. Did I really NOT see this one coming?