Welcome back to another installment of Latticed Learning! Today I'll be sharing the fifth 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!
Bible Lesson
Abraham (pages 39-51 in this Bible and 41-47 in this one)Memory Verse
Psalm 56:3-4 - This is the fifth 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
Elizabeth (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
E (Print out your free "E" phonics card here!)Topic to Explore
Animals (general animals)Shape
Ellipse/Oval (I'm kind of going in order of vertices/sides and each one will last for several weeks.)Number
4 (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
Llama Llama Red Pajama is one of our favorite picture books ever - all three of us love its rhyming verse and Gv especially loves the page at the end where the mama llama races frantically to her baby llama's side.(Note: If your child is like ours and makes all sorts of panicked mama sound effects to go along with that page in the book, don't pack this selection in your church bag - because your child will choose to look at it during the most inopportune time possible, like the prayer immediately before the Eucharist. Ask me how I know...)
From Head to Toe is another family favorite because you get to move around while you read it. It's also the perfect book to grab whenever your little one takes a tumble and you want to make sure they can move everything without it hurting.
Gv woke up crying that her neck hurt a few weeks ago - like screaming in pain - and to help rule out the scary meningitis option (even though she had no fever), we used this book to help get her to move her neck enough to see if she could touch her chin to her chest (she could). We couldn't get her to move her head at all on her own, but once we started reading this book, she was perfectly willing to go through all the book's motions!
One Was Johnny is honestly one that we hardly look at any more, but that's just because we all know the whole book by heart - it's what I'm usually reciting (although I pause and let Gv chime in as each animal joins the fray) whenever I'm driving around in the car.
Animal Tracks was a book that came along with us this summer and it's continued to be a favorite. We had fun doing several activities that coordinated with its theme this week.
Everyone Poops has been an extended-family favorite ever since the first cousin was born. Gv gets the giggles as she reads through this one by herself each day.
There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly
is a great book anyway, but we had even more fun with it this week when we paired it with the activity you'll read about below.
Other Great Books We Read
Songs We Played By
I went through all the children's songs on my iPod and created a playlist just for this week. Here are some of the best selections from our list:
When I Am Afraid from this album helped Gv learn our memory verse
We sang this song quite a lot this week.
The Four-Legged Zoo from this
We sang this song quite a lot this week.
The Four-Legged Zoo from this
Pretty much this whole album is perfect for this week
Sam Hinton and Pete Seeger have loads of animal songs
This album is a new addition to our collection, but it's great for this week, since so many rhymes feature animals.
Sam Hinton and Pete Seeger have loads of animal songs
This album is a new addition to our collection, but it's great for this week, since so many rhymes feature animals.
And so many more, but I'll let you search through your own music collection to see what types of animal-related songs you can add to a playlist.
Videos We Explored
This short video matched up with our Bible lesson.
We did "E" things on this site.
We watched this clip and a few of the others for the letter "E."
This video fit perfectly for the number 4.
We watched a few different versions of City Mouse/Country Mouse, like this one.
How We Played
We did lots of things to learn about God's promise to Abraham:I printed out this mini book, 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. Gv loves to sit and retell the stories with the help of her ring books!
I also printed out the "God's Promise to Abram" (scroll to find it) book and added the pages to our dollar store photo albums that look like this:
I decided not to do this next thing with Gv this year (because we'd already reached her glue limit), but these star babies are just too cute and I can see trying them out when Gv is able to cut a bit better on her own.
We made star sheets. I was smart and stuck the paper in one of these tubs first:
Then I gave Gv liquid glue in a tablespoon along with a Q-tip and let her paint stars on the black construction paper.
She finished by shaking whatever glitter she wanted over it all. (It may not be fancy, but it's all hers!):
We made star sun catchers by gluing craft sticks together in a star shape:
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| I used mini craft sticks to make this star... |
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| ...and regular craft sticks to make these |
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| I liked how this one turned out the best |
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| The stars hung perfectly from this in Gv's room |
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| This star had a different effect...it was kind of cool the way the layers turned out |
We also created a sand star. I liked this idea because it combined the stars with the sand (both illustrating the number of Abraham's children), but I have to admit, it was all pretty messy - find the recipe for how to make your own objects out of sand here:
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| We shook all the leftover glitter from the previous activity onto this star while it was drying - to give it some extra pizazz |
I made these beloved crackers and cut them into star shapes:
We constructed a star mobile. I was so excited about this one because it's really simple to make, but looks so impressive. First, I cut a spiral out of blue construction paper. Next, I cut thin strips of blue paper and let Gv glue them onto the different levels of the spiral. Finally, I cut out yellow and orange stars and Gv glued them onto the hanging strips:
It really looks fancier when you've hung it up:
We ended up not having time for these cute coloring pages, but we did sing the song that they go so well with.
We also did a few things (besides reading books) to correspond to our general animals topic:
I shrunk down these adorable animal A-Z pages so they'd print 8 to a page and then stapled them into a mini-coloring book for Gv.
We made a "Feed the Old Lady" box and it ended up being a better idea than I'd even expected. Look for all the details on making this yourself in this post!
I'm not sure whether Gv got more ink on her fingers or these great animal track stamps, but she had a blast, regardless.
I wasn't in the painting mood this week, but I'm hoping to do these with Gv next year.
We read lots of this book and acted it out:
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| "I can do it!" |
And finally, we made these yummy cookies to enjoy all week long (or at least for the three nights they lasted!) The recipe was right up our alley and already healthy, so I didn't even have to change a thing!
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| Pawprint cookies - do you see them? |
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.