We wrapped May up with The Quiet Way Home by Bonny Becker, illustrations by Benrei Huang. The story follows a little girl and her father as they walk home from school. Not the way of the rumbling trucks or growling dogs, but the way the whirring grasshoppers and humming honeybees go. We experienced the beauty of the softer, quieter things while we explored our environment, rather than the rough and tumble of our ordinarily loud lives.
This is a story that can be read anytime throughout your school year. Though, I would plan for a time with a lot of hustle and bustle and nature exploration opportunities. Its interesting to hop back and forth between the calm, quiet beauty of nature and the noisy fun of our world.
But before I go into our study…
Just to Recap
We always begin our morning with our morning basket, a study time I call Morning Time. Essentially, I stage all our morning time study stuff for the day, or week, in a basket which keeps me organized and looks super cute! Our Morning Time consists of recitation, poetry reading, and devotional time with some music and fun learning activities mixed in. Specifically, Micah recites the catechism questions and Bible memory verses he’s learned- I introduce a new question and verse with every new book study. Then, in no particular order, I read a few poems and a chapter from either the Jesus Storybook Bible by Sally Lloyd-Jones or a Bible passage that corresponds with our lesson.
To break up the readings, we sing or listen to various styles of music and do a simple yet fun alphabet, numbers, or shapes activity. I do our Morning Time while we are all gathered around the table for breakfast, though you can do it anytime, really. But most importantly, I keep it short!
After a break, I normally don’t have a set time, we start our daily lesson beginning with the book we are studying. We only do an actual school lesson three or four days a week, though we begin every weekday morning with Morning Time. The other days are reserved for free learning in a fun environment!
For Micah’s lessons, I use the Before Five in a Row curriculum. If you haven’t checked it out yet, I detail the plan for our first year of homeschooling in Our School Year. With this curriculum, we read a new suggested story- which quickly becomes a favorite- every two weeks. I use the guide to structure our lessons, and supplement them with other stories and nonfiction books, craft ideas, and activities. I absolutely LOVE the Before Five in a Row curriculum and explain more about it and our homeschool style here!
That’s it in a nutshell, at least until I refine it again, and again… and again. Anyway…
Let’s Dig into Our Study!
Daily Morning Time
Bible Study
I introduced question nine in the Catechism for Young Children,
“What is God?”
The answer is, “God is a spirit, and has not a body like men.” Though Micah memorized, “God is a spirit, he doesn’t have a body like us.” I’m not huge on exact memorization unless it’s the Word of God.
And for Micah’s Bible memory verse, he learned Galatians 5:22-23 (a huge feat!),
“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.”
For our devotional time, we read a few different scripture verses about the importance of quiet: Psalm 46:10, Psalm 131:2, Proverbs 17:1, 1 Peter 3:4, and Proverbs 15:1, in no particular order. To begin our school time, I would say a verse and we would sit really still for up to two minutes, building up from 30 seconds. I would also use this time to have them listen to our surroundings, so we switched up the location frequently. Sometimes we would just focus on being still and quiet, other times we would also focus on listening very closely to our surroundings, and other times I would ask what they heard and make a list we could later reflect on.
In fact, we still do this practice using Psalm 46:10a,
“Be still and know that I am God”
and Psalm 131:2a,
But I have calmed and quieted my soul.”
To prepare our minds and bodies for reading time during our studies or before bed. I find this works well to calm Micah and Skye.
Poetry and Rhymes
For our two weeks with The Quiet Way Home, I read poems from Kooky Crumbs, Poems in Praise of Dizzy Days by J. Patrick Lewis. I also read from Usborne’s Aesop’s Stories for Little Children. I’m not a huge fan of reading kid-versions of things, but because Micah and Skye are so young, they just don’t understand or maintain attention for the original versions. However, they love the simpler retellings in this book.
Alphabet, Numbers, Shapes
For the alphabet, numbers, and shapes activities, I randomly choose something from my go-to activities in order to break up the readings. I only do one activity per day, and alternate between doing an alphabet, numbers, or shapes activity.
For the alphabet, I like to work through the alphabet sounds or match letters. I have Micah tell me the sounds of each letter, then we discover things that begin with each sound. Micah really likes to use Kane Miller’s Alfie and Bet’s ABC pop-up alphabet book and Usborne’s Get Ready for School Alphabet Sticker Book. I also like to work through his flash cards, he has a few different sets, and play the Alphabet Laundry game from our Jesse Bear, What Will You Wear? study.
For numbers, I like to have Micah either count objects- marshmallows and M&Ms work great- or match and identify numbers. Right now, Micah is working on counting from 1 to 20 and tens up to 100. He uses a counting board I quickly made one day, and he places M&Ms or marshmallows in each block as he counts- it helps him count in order from 1 to 20. Or I have him identify numbers with our Usborne flashcards. I started to incorporate a little math with this lesson, too.
And for shapes, I like to have Micah identify shape cards. Sometimes we draw the shapes or even learn about their sides and points. And other times we use blocks with the shape cards to talk about two-dimensional and three-dimensional shapes, and their corresponding names.
The Quiet Way Home Study
For The Quiet Way Home, I didn’t really stick to subject areas as I have been. Instead, I tried a different style of teaching and learning, I took certain lessons recommended in the Before Five in a Row curriculum guide for this book and integrated them naturally as we just explored the world around us. The focus on this study was to get out in nature, different natural environments and familiar ones. So, everyday we did something outside, whether playing in the backyard, walking down our foresty greenway, or exploring a variety of our natural state parks!
Below is a list of lessons I used while we played and explored outside, in no particular order. There are many ways to incorporate different lessons with nature activities, I just made a tentative plan, and let weather dictate what we did. Honestly, all you have to do is walk out your front door- the world is full of natural learning!
Colors
In the beginning of The Quiet Way Home, there are three cars in a row: red, blue, and yellow. And throughout the story there are vibrant and colorful images of the world as the little girl walks home. So, for this lesson we explored primary and secondary colors. While we were out exploring, Micah gathered a variety of colors, every color he could find. After a bit of exploring and gathering, we found a great place to spread out a blanket and rest. I pulled out some art supplies I brough with us, and Micah used his primary colors to mix and paint what he had gathered. We have talked about primary and secondary colors before, so it was fun just to let him explore and discover with no guidelines.
Balance
In The Quiet Way Home, there are many example of balance in the artwork and architecture. During one read through, we focused on areas of balance within the pictures in the story. Then, we took a walk around the neighborhood and looked at all the examples of balance in the architecture and nature.
Another day, we played balance games in the backyard to discover physical balance. You can turn any game into a balance game, really. We hopped on one foot, switched to the other, walked across wood, lifted a leg into the air, tilted over, anything to test physical balance. Another day, we were hiking a trail to some old buildings in the forest, and we had to balance on a wood plank to get across the stream. There are many ways to naturally integrate this concept.
Ears
A lot of our experience with The Quiet Way Home incorporated sound. So, we talked about the human ear and how we hear sounds. I used a few human body books to briefly talk about the ear and we looked at pictures. Then, I had Micah and Skye cup their ears to create a different hearing effect. We whispered, shouted, murmured, exclaimed, guffawed, and more. I love introducing new descriptive words into their vocabularies, and it’s always fun to make silly noises!
Quiet Time
Continuing with ears and sounds, we focused on quieting ourselves and listening to the world around us. As I mentioned above, we practiced sitting still and quiet for an increasing amount of time, listening to our surroundings in various locations. Sometimes we would sit quietly and marvel at the world, other times I would ask what they heard and made a list they could care and reflect on.
Flowers
The girl and her father go through a field of dandelions in The Quiet Way Home. So, while we were out exploring, we talked about different flowers. We made daisy crowns, played the buttercup game, blew milkweeds, and collected wildflowers for our home.
Bugs!
The quiet way home takes the girl passed grasshoppers and honeybees. There are so many bugs all around us- and Micah LOVES bugs. While we were out, we discovered all the bugs we could. I carried around a few good insect books so we could quickly identify them.
Other Read-through Activities
If you want to slip in some counting, have your child count the daisies in the field during one read through, or the number of quiet noises made, or vehicles, etc. Then, while you’re outside, count the flowers, bugs, fire hydrants, light poles, crabs, frogs, whatever you come across.
You can always play the I Spy game during a read through, there are many things to spy. Then, you can play I Spy while you’re outside adventuring!
Lastly, on the title page, there are children playing games. Maybe you and your child can go outside and play catch, hopscotch, skip, jump, etc. This could also accompany the balance games.
Now really lastly,
These are just a few suggestions from Before Five in a Row or ideas I came up with. I want to reiterate that our focus was being outside. I wanted our activities to be as natural as possible, and I wanted to create the conditions for Micah to discover these things on his own. Though it may seem like I intervened a great deal, I did not. Mostly, I kept ideas in the back of my head and tried to slip them in here and there to prompt learning and exploration, but they will do that themselves. And there’s something really magical about letting them discover on their own, uninterrupted and unguided. I believe children learn more when they can draw their own conclusions and figure things out themselves.
But Most Important… Have Fun!
The Quiet Way Home is yet another treasured book we have had the opportunity to add to our collection. It never ceases to amaze me how much we can get out of our stories! Seriously, I know I keep talking about it, but the Before Five in a Row curriculum is amazing! It’s so perfect for our pre-preschool studies! I just want to mention again though, we don’t spend much time at all ‘studying.’ I work with Micah maybe 30 minutes to an hour, three to four times a week. Mostly we are talking, playing, doing crafts or activities, and exploring fun places! It’s all about exposure and experience, and getting his little mind thinking! My goal is to make learning something fun that he wants to do and not just something he feels he must do to get good grades.
