The Quiet Way Home

If you haven’t been able to find this book at the library or purchase it at a reasonable price, click here to download a copy for $0.99 from the apple store.

We loved the slowed-down, peaceful tone of this book. There were many little gems we gleaned along “the quiet way home”.

Bible

We chose to memorize Psalm 46:10, “Be still and know that I am God.”

Click here to download your FREE Bible Verse printable in my TPT store.

Parker repeatedly worked on his Bible verse puzzle while we rowed this book.

Listening to God

The characters in this book chose a quieter way home that allowed them to listen to various sounds. When we quiet ourselves, we are able to hear the Lord speak to us.

Listening to God was one themes we studied during Bible time. We read The Lord Calls Samuel and talked about how God speaks to us through His word or in a message we hear at Sunday School.

We talked about being a good listener, the kids worked on a “label the listener” worksheet, and we went on a listening walk.

We stopped at a bench and read The Listening Walk by Paul Showers. The kids LOVED listening for the sounds mentioned in the book….we actually heard almost every one!

Afterwards, the kids wrote and illustrated something from their listening walk.

The Parable of the Sower

Since it was springtime and the story mentioned dandelions and flowers, we read The Parable of the Seeds and explored plants. We talked about what plants need to grow and the kids worked on a flower lifecycle worksheet.

We found a wonderful Grow in God printable from Mrs. Jone’s Creation Station which included a song about what we need to grow spiritually. This was a wonderful addition to to our Bible lesson. We went on several walks and found many dandelions on our way!

Language Arts

This was the first BFIAR book we rowed without using a printable pack we found online. I created graphics inspired by the artwork in the book, created my first printable pack, and posted many FREEBIES too! You can download all of them at my TPT store.

I set up our sensory story box with toys and figures to go along with our vocabulary words. Parker matched the objects with the vocabulary cards. I included the sensory story box in our learning lane every day.

Phonics:

The Quiet Way Home Printable Pack included phonics clip cards and an uppercase/lowercase letter match worksheet.

We used the Letter match printable as a starting sound phonics activity too.

We started a phonics box for Parker this year. Each week we would introduce a letter, sing the sounds it made, and add a toy/figure that started with that sound. By the end of the year, his phonics box was busting with cards & toys! It took him awhile to match them up, but he LOVED it!

Spelling

Parker continued to work on reading his CVC words. Some days we used our pink reading mats from The Helpful Garden, other days we used our magnetic letters with picture cards, and we continued to incorporate other reading activities in our learning lane. His reading skills are really blossoming.

Q is for Quiet

Our Sonlight letter of the week was “Q”, so we started our morning on a “Q is for quiet” theme.

The kids ate “Q” pancakes, we read a few quiet themed books, and they worked on a Letter Q worksheet.

The Quiet Cricket:

Keeping our quiet theme going, we read The Very Quiet Cricket by Eric Carle. We love his artwork and felt inspired to create our own multi-media art project.

We started with a tempura paint background, I cut out moons and stars and the kids glued them to the background. They were beautiful backdrops.

The kids dot painted tissue paper for the cricket.

I traced and cut-out cricket shapes and the kids pasted tissue paper squares.

Afterward, they glued their crickets to the night background and traced the crickets with glitter glue. They were beautiful!

The Keeping Quilt:

Since we were working on the letter Q, I found a really cute “Q is for Quilt” activity. I gathered a few quilt themed books, cut some scrapbook paper squares, and the kids happily worked on their paper quilt craft.

The craft turned out adorable and Patricia Pollaco’s The Keeping Quilt was one of our favorite stories that day.

So many of our quilting books were about generations of family. We talked about the importance of family and how blessed we are to have grandparents live so close.

That day we read quite a few books about grandparents and I set up our sensory bin with some family figures from Life Over C’s.

Math

Parker worked on a sorting by size activity and graphing activity from our printable pack. You can purchase The Quiet Way Home Printable Pack at my TPT store.

He continued to work on various math activities using our spring-themed printables.

Science

Ears, Sound, & Hearing

Since the theme of this book is about listening, we decided to explore sound. We read several books about the human ear and the sense of hearing.

Of all the science books we read, our favorite was Paul Shower’s Ears are For Hearing. I created a science printable pack to use while studying the human ear.

You can download a FREE copy of my human ear nomenclature cards here at my TPT store or purchase the complete science pack here at our TPT Store.

We used the nomenclature cards to go over the various parts of the human ear. We also found a cross section of the human head with a pull out ear by Learning Resources. This was a great resource to use alongside our cards.

We also did many hearing experiments and practiced honing our listening skills with a mystery sound guessing game.

Helen Keller

Since we were studying the sense of hearing, we also talked about the absence of hearing, or rather deafness. We read quite a few books about Helen Keller and watched an animated movie about her life on our youtube mix.

Peter and the Wolf

While studying sound, we took a day to explore music and how certain composers used instruments to tell stories. We started our morning reading Carnival of the Animals and Sounds All Around.

We found two really cool classical music apps by Naxos on the ipad. The kids learned quite a bit about various composers and instruments just by playing around with the apps.

We talked about how composers used certain instruments to represent characters in their pieces, specifically Peter and the Wolf. I found some Peter and the Wolf matching cards and we went over each instrument and what character it played.

The kids watched the Sesame Street version of Peter and the Wolf. I brought out our instrument cards from The Helpful Garden and the kids matched up the instruments with the Sesame Street character. This was a great exercise in listening.

Exploring Color Theory

We’ve explored color theory many times before. I try to change the activity each time to keep things fresh and exciting.

We read The Color Kittens and I presented each child with a tray of red, yellow, and blue play dough with a selection of rainbow beads, jewels, and buttons.

The kids got right to work mixing their primary colors to make their secondary colors.

Once they had their primary and secondary colors, they began to match the various items to their coordinating color. They REALLY enjoyed this activity and it allowed them to experience color mixing on their own.

This was an eclectic mix of quiet & loud, hearing & listening, family, dandelions, colors and more! We had a wonderful time rowing this book and we look forward to our next BFIAR adventure.

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