Latticed Learning: Week 1

Some of the links on this site are affiliate links. This means if you click on a link and purchase something, I'll receive a small affiliate commission at no cost to you. Thanks so much for supporting my efforts with this blog!

Welcome back to another installment of Latticed Learning!  Today I'll be sharing the first week of our journey with you.  You'll get a chance to see what we did, the resources we used (click here to see what we're using week after week), and hopefully come away with lots of fun ideas for things to do with your own little one!

This first week saw us focusing more on our Bible lesson than anything else (we had such fun with it!), but we managed to touch on the other focus areas, too.  That's the beauty of doing things this way - we can spend more time on whatever seems most interesting to us at the moment and when we revisit these topics next year, we'll still have plenty of new areas to explore!

Bible Lesson

Creation (pages 7-13 in this Bible and 3-9 in this one)

Memory Verse

Matthew 19:14 - This is the first song on this album, which I've raved about before.  I also created this card:

to post on the fridge each week (and then add to a mini photo album from the local dollar store when we take it down) and I'm amazed that Gv can say this first verse - minus the reference - by herself already!

You can download your own copy of this card for free here!  Want the whole set right now?  Get them here.

Saint 

Agnes (I know nothing about the lives of the saints, but when I saw these cuter-than-cute cards, I decided they gave me the perfect excuse to learn!  They're honestly more for me than Gv at this point, although she can put the name to the card after having it up on the fridge and talking about it all week.)

Letter

A (Print out your free "A" phonics card here!)

Topic to Explore

Food (This included fruit, veggies, gardens, eating, basically anything related to food.)

Shape

Circle (I'm kind of going in order of vertices/sides and each one will last for several weeks.)

Number

0 (Like I said in this post about the alphabet, we'll talk about all (well, maybe not all) the numbers every week, but I'm choosing one to focus on each week and you'll see some repetition as time goes on with a few of them.)

Best Books We Read This Week

 

A Crazy Day at the Critter Cafe is fun to read.  The story rhymes well, the illustrations are cool and remind me of this book, and there are all sorts of animals filling the pages. 

 

Sitting Down to Eat has great repetition, animals, a silly ending, and will probably remind you of this story.



Today is Monday and The Very Hungry Caterpillar - two classics that I'm sure everyone is familiar with.

 

Out to Lunch is a silly book showing what happens when a frog tries to mind his manners at a fancy restaurant.

 

Froggy Bakes a Cake is not only full of silliness, but you'll find that onomatopoeia graces almost every page, making it fun not only for the listener, but the one reading it aloud, as well!

 

Gregory the Terrible Eater is a hilarious book about a goat who disappoints his parents by only eating things like fruits and vegetables, instead of their "healthy" diet of trash and old shoes.

Other Great Books We Read

Socks for Supper

Growing Vegetable Soup

Pumpkin Pumpkin

Bear and Bunny Grow Tomatoes

Feast for 10

Jamberry

What Am I

Blueberries for Sal

Froggy Eats Out

Apples

The Berenstain Bears Go Out to Eat

Songs We Played By

I went through all the children's songs on my iPod and created a playlist just for this week.  I was amazed to find I had over 70 kid's songs related to a food theme!  Here are some of the best selections from our list:

Let the Little Children Come from this album helped Gv learn our memory verse

My Hero, Zero from this

Pretty much any song from the Picnic Playground album, which I raved about here

This fun album, which I shared lots of fun activities for here

A bunch of the silly sing-along songs from this album that I shared here

Tons of songs by the guy I wrote about here, particularly from this album

Classics that will jazz up your day from this album, which I shared here

And so many more, but I'll let you search through your own music collection to see what types of songs you can add to a playlist.

Videos We Explored

This video matched up with our Bible perfectly.

We did "A" things on this site.

We watched this clip and a few of the others for the letter "A."

This short video covered the number zero.

How We Played

We did lots of things to learn about the days of creation:

We collected things to represent what God made each day in our Creation Box.

We ate something special for each day, which you can read all about here.

We added a new page every day to our Creation Book.

I printed out this adorable mini flip book (scroll down to find it), punched a hole in the corner of each page, and stuck it all on a ring (a plastic one I'd had in my classroom, but you could use one like this) so that Gv could have something handy to carry around and refer to.  This was such a hit, I'm planning to use this idea for every week I can and then keep all the ring books in a basket.  G and I were both amazed at how well Gv could retell the whole story, using these cards, after just one day!

I shrunk these cute pages down to 50% before printing them out and sticking them in a 5x7" photo album from the dollar store.  I'll be getting more of these albums for future print-outs, as well as to keep all of our memory verse cards in, once we take them down off the fridge.

We put these sequencing cards up on the fridge all week and I held each one up there with a number magnet.  Gv would go take them all down, then retell the story while putting them back up, several times each day.

I printed out these coloring pages and we did use them, but I only printed out the birds, fish, and animals pages.

We also did a few things (besides reading books) to correspond to our food topic:

We planted seeds (saved from the tomatoes and peppers in the previous night's salad) in a little container out in the yard.

We looked through a grocery ad that came in the mail one day, pointing out the different foods we saw.  When Gv is older, I can see doing more with this - projects involving cutting and gluing and such, but that wasn't necessary this year.

We played with Gv's cool felt food and her other play kitchen toys (ours was a hand-me-down, but it's kind of like this one).

I created a fruit and veggie matching game for Gv.  I put all sorts of cute clip art graphics on a page and printed them out in color, then printed another set in black and white.  I had her point out the matches between the two sheets, then told her to use the same colors to color in the pictures on the black and white page.  Then we cut (she can just do the first snip herself at this point) out each picture, spread them all out, and had her find the matches, naming each one as she did.  I used clip art from my favorite Print Shop software to do this, so I can't share it due to copyright reasons, but you can find a similar one that looks really fantastic here.

We also took a field trip to the local supermarket.  Besides getting yummy samples from all the different departments, we got to go in the back and see the baler work, step into the freezer, and stand on the loading dock.  Our field trip was even tailored to preschoolers, but we're already planning to return in a few years for their elementary-aged tour.  Be sure to check with your local supermarket to see about this fun excursion - it was lots of fun!

Her first free cookie experience from the bakery!

Looking for all the great posts associated with this concept in one place?  Check out my Latticed Learning page here!

What's your favorite thing that we did this week?  I'd love to hear!  Either leave a comment below or email me at lisahealy (at) outlook (dot) com.

Also, if you don't want to miss a single minute of great tips like this and all the fun around here, be sure to sign up for free updates and then look forward to having each post delivered right to your inbox. 

Linked up with:  Merry Monday, Motivation Monday, Thoughtful Spot, Mom 2 Mom Monday, What'd You Do This Weekend, Meet Up Monday, Totally Terrific Tuesday, Two Uses Tuesday, Lou Lou Girls Fabulous Party, Tell it to Me Tuesday, Good Tips Tuesday, Talented Tuesday, Wordless Wednesday, A Little Bird Told Me, WFMW, Hit Me With Your Best Shot, The Mommy Club, Creative Muster, Grandma Ideas, The Ladies Collective, A Little R&R Wednesdays, Drop & Run Wednesdays , This Is How We Roll, Frugal Family Linky, Creative Ways, Hearts for Home, Creative Exchange,I'm Lovin' It,Kitchen Fun & Crafty, Inspiration Spotlight, Home Matters, Pretty Pintastic Party, Front Porch Friday, Weekend Potluck, Awesome Life Friday, Creative Collection, Littles Learning Link-up