Fun with Echoes

I love it when a story has such real-life applications. If you have a young child, you need to read Little Beaver and The Echo to them. It is one of the sweetest stories on our shelves, and no matter how many times I read it, both of my children laugh and say how much they enjoy the story. My sister gave it to my daughter when she was just a baby. Let me tell you how it came to mean even more to us.

Over the Labor Day weekend we received an invitation to visit Lake Martin (which is in Alabama, for those of you not from the south). We had such a wonderful time. It was so relaxing to swim in the lake with our family. We saw lots of different types of birds, several deer, and, one morning, a turtle swimming under the dock.

During one of our swims (we had gone out pretty far) I was with GMan and we were just floating and chatting. I think I must have hollered something over to someone else and we heard my echo. GMan said "just like little beaver, mom" (you see, in the story little beaver hears his echo, but thinks it is another friend across the water. So sweet.) There is also a turtle in the story, and we had just seen a turtle earlier that day.

So, we had lots to talk about. It was fun to play with our real echoes and think about the story while we were floating in the water. We hadn't read the story in a few weeks, but when we got home guess which story GMan pulled out for me to read? That's right, Little Beaver and the Echo. (click on the link for some teaching ideas)

I LOVE homeschooling - because I can take a moment like this and capture it, then expand on it at our leisure. My children are beginning to see everything in relation to what we learn, and how cool is that? Life is their classroom, and I'm just their guide.
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Our Next Row - "Lentil"

I am so excited for this week because GMan's Five In A Row book is "Lentil" by Robert McCloskey. I have no doubt that Miss B will also benefit from the week's activities as well. The story is so engaging and there are just so many points to take off from and explore! We tried something new tonight - reading the book at Sunday dinner (so dad can hear, too) and talking about it as a family before we really immerse ourselves in it this week. By the way, we have these placemats of the United States for the kids to use at dinner so we can always be talking about geography!

Here are some of things we have planned to go along with the book:

• getting out our harmonica and learning to "play" it
• activities about Ohio - lapbook elements from Homeschool Share.
• math word problems - also from Homeschool Share
• experimenting with the science of sound
• singing "She'll Be Comin' Round the Mountain"
• exploring our sense of taste, particularly sour lemons! (I am so excited about this because we are making a lemonade layer cake for dessert one night this week and inviting my husband's father for dinner. He grew up in a small town, much like the one in "Lentil". He also plays the harmonica and is a veteran. If you know the story, you know how perfect this will be to have him share some activities with us!)
• making homemade lemonade for snack one day
• talking about what life was like in a small town in the mid 1900s versus what life is like now/lots of Social Studies connections

Once again, the FIAR teacher's guide has tons of great suggestions, and once we read through the book my kids even brought up things that we could study as well. I'm looking forward to this "row", and I'll let you know how it goes!

Have you rowed this book? Let me know if you have and what you loved about it!

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Music Lesson - Little Bitty Mousie

Today has been one of those great homeschooling days - a day when it has been obvious to me that real homeschooling occurs in any place and often at unscheduled and unplanned times. I'd like to tell you about a wonderful spontaneous lesson we had this afternoon.

Yesterday we went to the library. Most visits my children pick a lot of books off the shelves that look appealing to them (with a little guidance from me). We came home with nearly twenty books yesterday and sat down with a couple today. What a gem we found in "Little Bitty Mousie", a traditional alphabet rhyme done by Jim Aylesworth.

Immediately when you start to read the book you notice there is a natural rhythm to the words... even my fourth grader was taken in by the clever pictures and rhyming verse. (I had thought she would consider it too babyish, but I was happily wrong!) Since both of my children have had music classes before they immediately started to tap the steady beat on their laps - great, I thought! We can do a lot with this book. The book goes through each letter of the alphabet and after three letters it does a little "tip-tip tippy tippy" refrain of sorts. Here is an example from the beginning of the book:

As we read through the book each time we got to the "tip-tip tippy tippy" part I had the children say it with me. After a time through the book they pretty much had it memorized. So, the next step was to get out our instruments. Now, I don't have fancy instruments. I got them at a consignment sale a long time ago, but they work just fine for us!

I know you can buy these at Target as well. They are so cute because the "A" is jingle bells, the "B" is a maraca, and the "C" is a tambourine. I asked Miss B and GMan to play an instrument each time they said the "tip-tip tippy tippy" part. Miss B knew what I meant when I said play the rhythm of the words, but I had to explain to GMan that this just meant make your instrument match your words!

Miss B picked up the drum and played the steady beat during the other parts of the book and then both children played the rhythm during the "tip-tip tippy tippy" parts. It was so much fun... I think we even succeeded in teaching GMan that the steady beat is just like your heart (it never changes and is steady) and that rhythm usually goes with the words (or the melody). This was one of the big things I taught children back when I was in the elementary schools.

I also loved the illustrations in this book - my daughter was pointing out all of the great pictures. This one was her favorite; I think it is because the quarter is so life-like.

We also noted when the story got more exciting (we played loudly) and when the mouse was tiptoeing (we played softly) and at the end when she ran into the mouse we just played crazily! There are so many possibilities with this book. If you just get the book from your library and put some instruments in your children's hands, I bet they can take it from there. Children are innately musical and uninhibited! Have fun with this book -- let me know if you try it!
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