Nov. 1, 2007 - First Konos Unit - Attentiveness: Ears/Sound/Music
This year for school we still are using Konos Unit Studies, but I am also participating in the Online Coop available through Konos and it is great. Our first unit was Attentiveness studying Ears/Sound/Music. So we learned about being attentive, especially to God and the kids dramatized Samuel & Eli from the bible and learned about Mary & Martha too. We studied a different bible memory verse each week too. They had to listen carefully for me to whisper to them & then come right away throughout the day. We played games that require concentration such as Simon Says, Duck Duck Goose, Hokey Pokey, and Memory. We learned all about how the ear works and built a crawl through ear.
We kept the crawl through ear up for a number of weeks and the kids especially loved sitting in the comfy brain (a bunch of pillows that were connected to the ear by nerves). We were supposed to visit a hearing aid dept. but that didn't end up happening. We performed a bunch of different science experiments, which didn't all work the way they were supposed to but the kids at least understood what was supposed to happen. In these pictures we are recording a hacksaw blade vibration and how length & speed affect sound or vibrations by drawing sound waves with a pen.
We took apart a telephone and researched Doppler effect, wavelength, ultrasonic sound etc. We learned all about Helen Keller and watched the Miracle Worker and learned some sign language. We listened carefully to a hidden timer beeping and had to find it with our eyes closed. The kids liked this a lot and liked hiding it for me as well. My oldest dd kept on pretending to be Helen Keller all the time and still does. We learned all about the piano and got to see inside of Grandmas. We listened to lots of classical music and learned about different composers and the orchestra. We made different muscial instruments and learned about how thickness or size and length affect the pitch of the instrument. We took a field trip to a music store and the kids even got free shakers from the gentleman giving us the tour. We learned about whole notes and half notes, etc. And we made a lapbook about all the different things we learned. One other fun thing for our unit was a language arts activity where you take sticky notes and label them with different adjectives and then the kids have to stick them to something that fits that description and so my daughter stuck the sticky note that read "Itchy" on her face on top of a mosquito bite and so of course I had to take a picture.
I wasn't that pumped about this unit, since I have never been musically inclined, besides liking to sing and listen to music, but we had a lot of fun and we learned a lot.
Here the kids are pretending to be a Bride & Groom while listening to Mendelssohn's "Wedding March". You've got to love unit studies, especially when the main focus of Konos unit studies are on the character. We started out every day with our bible study and going over the character trait that we were on and it made such a big difference (lots of the time more for me even
than the kids) and put our focus where it should be. Last year I didn't emphasize the trait like I should have and this year it is making such a difference and I am thankful for that!
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