Gramma's Walk

Our final row of the year was Gramma's Walk.  This is a gentle story about a wheelchair-bound grandmother taking her grandson on an imaginary walk along the seaside.  We very gently rowed this book as well-- it being the last FIAR book of the year.  This time the favorite phrases from the book that the kids liked to repeat were the sound effects-- the bonga of the buoy and the swishing of the waves. 

 

Our activities included:

~leading each other on our own imaginary walks.  I enjoyed revisiting my family's favorite vacation destination when I was growing up and sharing this with K and T.

~discussing backtracking as part of the structure of a story.  K wrote her own story using this literary device.

~T studying compound words found in the story by assembling and reassembling pairs of words I'd written on index cards.  We also added "sandcastle" to the list.  He enjoyed making new, silly compound words by putting the words together in novel ways.  He spent quite a bit of time with this.

~discussing handicap access.  We looked for the blue signs in the parking places on our trip to the library later in the day.  T still occasionally points out these omnipresent signs when he sees them.

~examining the illustrations and noticing all the colors in the drawings of the water.  K and T enjoyed making their own water pictures using lots of shades of blue, green, and yellow colored pencils.

~talking about seashores and looked at Googled images of the variously colored sands found around the world.  Fascinating variety.

 

We went through this book pretty quickly, and the best activity was when we went to the Oregon coast a few weeks later.  This was the kids' first time to the beach and they loved it.

 

 

 

Even though it was July, it was chilly with a brisk wind.

 

 

But such is to be expected at the beach in Oregon.  They still had an absolute blast.  We all had a very good time.  I'll try to post more pictures soon.

 

We didn't take a vacation to the beach because we were learning about it in FIAR, but it worked in perfectly to our studies.  It was a nice way to end the year.

 

Hopefully I can soon get caught up on a few more summer posts, then on to what we are doing this year!