B4FIAR: The Quiet Way Home

We spent a couple days reading a Before Five In a Row book titled, "The Quiet Way Home" by Bonnie Becker.  It is a sweet story describing a grandfather and his granddaughter taking "the road less traveled and delight[ing] in [the] small sounds, too good to miss" (summary from manual).  All the small sounds are those that are often lost in all the noise of children playing, busy streets, and the hustle n' bustle of life-- sounds such as the bees buzzing, a tricycle wheel creaking, a sprinkler spraying, and a man digging in his garden. 

Again, I find this B4FIAR book somewhat hard to blog about!  So bare with me!  Since the book dealt with sounds, we talked a little bit about the ear and I showed Tyler a picture of what the inside of the ear looks like; then thanks to Pinterest, I found a sweet BBC excerpt about how the ear works-- very cool!  I also made a Sound Matching Activity for Tyler.  I found some heart shaped boxes at the Dollar Store to use for this activity.  I put several different items in each of the hearts--  two hearts had the same item.  Without peaking into the hearts, Tyler had to shake them and find the match, only by using his sense of hearing!  He did really well!  He did miss one match though; but it was a tricky one.  The one he missed was when he matched a penny sound to the sound of two little bolts.  They sounded a lot alike! 

Another activity we did focused on opposites; I called it "Hunting for Opposites."  I wanted this to be an activity that Tyler did on his own, so I looked through old workbooks that we have accumulated and not used, to find pictures to use.  Once I found several pairs, I taped them onto the outside of plastic Easter egg halves and hid them around the playroom.  I mixed up the colors so Tyler would have to focus on matching the pictures-- not the egg colors.  For instance, Tyler matched day/night and each were on a different color egg.  Tyler had trouble with some of the pictures as it wasn't clear what the word was supposed to be, but otherwise he did great.  His favorite part was the egg hunt!

This would be a great book to read in the spring/ summer when we are able to get outside and enjoy all the different sounds there are-- we ended up getting snow and let's say I was not that adventurous!

We'll be having fun with Dr. Seuss books this week, and then we'll be back to FIAR-- can't wait!