"The Quiet Way Home" - BFIAR Activities

 

"The Quiet Way Home" was a sweet little read to learn from this week. We did several different activities and read several go along books. Ellie practiced writing uppercase and lowercase "Q,q" on paper and in her handwriting book. I put the letters up on her chalkboard and the word, "Quiet" while she wrote and we made the sounds of the letters in the word.

I really liked the idea of learning about our sense of hearing, the anatomy of the ear, the way ears receive sound and our brains process the sound, vibrations, and how sound can be high, low, rapid, or slow. So, we did a few different activities. 

First, using Easter eggs, I filled a few with different items: pine nuts, marbles, chocolate eggs, a sponge, and magnetic letters, "Q,q." Ellie shook them one by one, made guesses at what could be inside, then she sorted them by loudest egg to most quiet egg. Then, she opened them to reveal their contents. Ellie also counted her eggs.

Secondly, using straws, I showed Ellie how to make musical pipes. She blew into them and heard the different pitches and how soft the music was the instrument produced. 

We don't have a way in which we walk home daily. We drive everywhere because we live out in the country, hallelujah! But we are always taking walks. I found a beautiful garden in upstate SC where we live, in Spartanburg, where Ellie and I went on a quiet walk of our own in which we spent our time listening to the waterfall, creek, birds, wind. This was so wonderful. Ellie would call out to me saying, "Shh! Stop! Listen to that! Do you hear it?" It was truly a quiet, peaceful, bonding walk. We had a pic-nic, identified wildlife and flowers, and we read our book by a waterfall. There were also posts throughout the garden with letters of the alphabet which was just an added bonus of practicing phonetics and visual recognition. She climbed trees, played hopscotch, and even borrowed books from the Free Library.

Another listening activity and exploring the function of our ears was to dump all of Ellie's musical instruments out and let her play them. I encouraged her to play whatever she wanted, as fast, slow, quiet, or loud as she wanted. She would play something like the bells with nothing covering her ears. Then, I put my husband's noise canceling Bose earphones on her and told her to play the bells again. She laughed and said it was quiet! She said it was not as loud. She would take them on and off, on and off, comparing the volume of her play. 

Go Along Books: ...The Magic School Bus book is awesome for learning about sound and how it travels.

Bible verse for the story: 

"Be still and know that I am God;

I will be exalted among the nations,

I will be exalted in the Earth."

-Psalm 46:10