Here’s one more for you Eric Carle aficionados!
The Very Quiet Cricket is another great one to add to your collection of buggy Eric Carle books. This is the story of a young cricket who hatches from an egg one warm morning, and goes about meeting many interesting creatures, but is unable to chirp his hello until he meets a special friend.
The story structure is similar to others I’ve mentioned here, but that’s part of what makes it great for making comparisons in an author study! Similarly, the repetitive text in this and other Eric Carle books are perfect for preschoolers because it encourages them to “read” along and begin to associate words and print and to recognize the patterns in story structure.
After the story, explore how crickets make their chirping sound. (You can read more about it here.) To put it very simply, their wings are basically made like a violin and bow, with a violin on top of each wing and a bow on the bottom. The cricket can rub either wing on top of the other to make his unique sound.
If you have access to a violin or similar instrument, use that to teach the concept. If not, you can use a set of tin can phones! Hold the phones so that the line is taut. Dampen a small sponge and use it to pinch the line and drag it along. You should get a unique sound, amplified by the “phones”!
Talk about sound as a vibration and think of other ways to explore the science of sound as vibrations.
Tin can phone photo by K!T.