"The Cricket in Times Square" Unit Study by Sophia$

This term we were listening to an audio book called The Cricket in Times Square.It was so interesting we decided to do an unit study about it.

The Cricket in Times Square is about a cricket named Chester and his friends: A boy named Mario,a mouse named Tucker and a cat named Hairy.

One day we had a "Cricket in Times Square day with Daddy."

Themes
For our quiet time we talked about how friendship, loyalty, honesty, family, respect for elders, freedom, and home are themes in The Cricket in Times Square. We talked about which theme stands out to us most in the book and which of these ideas is most important to us. Eleanor said freedom was most important. I say loyalty.We prayed God would show us how to live out the theme that is most on our heart.

Fine Arts
At "Cricket in Times Square day with Daddy" we made little cricket cages like the ones in the photos and I made a little clay log with a face to be a cricket. We were going to make crickets out of paper tubes like the ones in the picture but we decided not to because we liked the little tiny cricket cages more.



 We also listened to some of the music that Chester the cricket played. We heard

“Come Back to Sorrento.” by Dean Martin
“A Little Night Music” by Mozart.
"Rock of Ages" by Johnny Cash
“Loochy the Murmurer” from the opera Lucia di Lammermoor
“Grand March” from Aida and we even saw a video of an opera, with dancers.
and “Onward Christian Soldiers”.

Comprehension stuff

(This next part I don't have a picture for so I am dictating it to you)

Also at Cricket at Times Square Day with Daddy, we had a little card game show where Daddy would ask us trivia questions about the book and we would write the answers down on cards and then he would say 1, 2, 3, Go, and we would hold the cards up to show him. We did the trivia game show so that way Daddy would know how much we knew about the book.

Science & Math

We did a science experiment where we figured out the temperature by listening to a cricket chirp.



Did you know God made crickets to tell the temperature? We found a youtube video called "Cricket Chirping" and counted how many times the crickets chirped. To convert cricket chirps to degrees Celsius, you count number of chirps in 25 seconds, divide by 3, then add 4 to get temperature.
Example: 48 chirps /(divided by) 3 + 4 = 20° C

The cricket we saw was in a place where it was 19 degrees C.

Social Studies

We looked at the maps in the road atlases we have of New York city. We found Connecticut where Chester the cricket came from and New York City. We found Coney Island, where Mario liked to go to swim.

We looked at the subway map. We used a pen to trace a route we thought Mario could have taken to go on the subway to Coney Island.

Daddy also took a video of us telling about the book and why we thought it was good and fun and how things were different in the setting of the book and today. Like how Mario worked at the newspaper stand or took the subway alone.

The Cricket In Times Square was awesome. I would recommend it to someone else because I think it has a good plot. Eleanor says, "it is a lovely story about friendship, freedom and kindness."