Welcome back to another installment of Latticed Learning! Today I'll be sharing the seventeenth 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
Elijah & Elisha (pages 201-239 in this Bible)Memory Verse
Philippians 2:14 - This is the seventeenth song on this album, which I've raved about before. I also created this card:
We post it on the fridge (and then add it to a mini photo album from the local dollar store when we take it down). I'm always amazed how quickly Gv can say her verse - minus the reference - each week!
You can download your own copy of this card for free here! Want the whole set right now? Get them here.
Saint
Quentin (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
Q (Print out your free "Q" phonics card here!)Topic to Explore
GeographyShape
Square (I'm kind of going in order of vertices/sides and each one will last for several weeks.)Number
16 (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
The Scrambled States of America is one that we read over. And over. And over. Between it and the video, Gv pretty much learned all 50 of the states.
Me on the Map is a popular choice, but for good reason. It really helps personalize maps for kids.
Usborne Children's Picture Atlas not only has typical great Usborne illustrations and kid-sized facts, but provides a seek-and-find aspect, as well.
M is for Majestic highlights the National Parks - so many great places to explore in the great outdoors!
National Geographic Kids Beginner's World Atlas is an over-sized book which introduces the different types of maps in addition to sharing factual tidbits from all over the world.
Other Great Books We Read
Most of these books are some of my favorites from my classroom, but they didn't make the top five because they're just a bit too overwhelming for Gv at this age. We still enjoyed flipping through them, though, and I know they'll be loads of fun when she gets a bit older:S is for Sunshine (There's a book for every state in this Discover America State by State series!)
Go, Go America
Follow That Map This was a very Where's Waldo-type book.
Ms. Frizzle's Adventures Imperial China
A Visit to Mexico
A Walk in Paris & A Walk in London
Maps & Globes Loads of information, but not too overwhelming for a little one to digest.
Harlem
My Map Book I wasn't a huge fan of the illustration style of this one, but I loved all the creative map ideas it presented.
America the Beautiful
National Geographic Kids Ultimate U.S. Road Trip Atlas
DK Travel Guides Kids' London
Lonely Planet's Not-For-Parents London
Our 50 States: A Family Adventure Across America (Even the illustrations were too overwhelming for Gv at this stage, but the kids in my classroom loved to just sit with this book and soak everything in. I love the concept of this book, with its imaginary family trip to all the states!)
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:
Without Complaining from this album helped Gv learn our memory verse
Our entire collection of Putumayo music, many of which I highlighted in this post as well as this one.
Our entire collection of Putumayo music, many of which I highlighted in this post as well as this one.
This entire CD.
Alphabet of Nations from the albums I share here.
Name the Oceans from this disc.
The People in Your Neighborhood from this.
Alabama, Mississippi from this guy.
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 your own playlist.
Videos We Explored
We did "Q" things on this site.We watched this clip and a few of the others for the letter "Q."
This short movie goes along with the fun book. (& we watched it over & over & over...)
I sang this song to Gv all week long (& would usually point out each state as I said it). If you don't know it, this short video will help you out.
How We Played
We did a few things to learn about Elijah & Elisha:We used Gv's adorable nativity set to re-enact Elijah's calling down fire from heaven:
and his ascension into heaven on the fiery chariot:
We made this fun clothespin raven (use black sharpie to color it, then glue on some black feathers, googly eyes, and a little construction-paper beak) when we talked about how God used ravens to bring food to Elijah in the desert:
I whipped up a loaf of our favorite bread for the ravens to feed us, just because I was craving the bread and it seemed like something ravens might bring.
I thought about making some sort of cracked chocolate cookies (to represent the dry, cracked earth) or a batch of these delicious homemade caramels (to build Mt. Carmel, get it?), but we still had too many desserts lingering around the house from a recent bake-a-thon, so I decided to skip it.
We made a whirlwind that was similar to the snake from this week. I drew the spiral lines, but this time, Gv was able to do all the cutting herself.
Then we printed out this cute graphic of Elijah and Elisha, taped it to the whirlwind, and hung the whole thing up on the mantel:
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| I kept hoping the whirlwind would magically blow all the dust away that you see resting on the edge of the fireplace, but it hasn't happened yet. Guess I have to break down and do some dusting... |
We also did several things (besides reading books) to correspond to our geography/maps topic:
We made our own map (I got the idea from here) to go along with this must-have book. Gv had fun "reading" through the story and following the path of the map on her own the rest of the week:
We put together all our U.S.A. puzzles. Many. Many. Many times:
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| As if all of these weren't enough, Gv discovered this one at our library and we had to put it together, as well. Each trip. And we went there three times this week... |
I took an old AAA map of the Southeastern States that we had lying around and used a highlighter to trace over all the major routes we've driven since Gv has been born.
She spent loads of time tracing the lines with her finger and exploring the map:
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| Yes, the floor totally looks this messy. All. The. Time. You feel better about your own floor now, don't you? |
I printed out this adorable U.S.A. passport, which could be used in so many different ways.
I'd planned to just stick everything on a ring so Gv could flip through the colorful pages and get familiar with the outlines of each state, but then I decided to create a more permanent book for her. I put them in one of our dollar-store photo albums and then wrote the dates of Gv's first visit to each state - this way, we can add each new state she visits in the future, which I think is really cool:
I did stick these pages on a ring. There were several countries G or I have visited that weren't included in the set, so I'm thinking about making up my own version of this, someday.
Gv and I colored in the pages for any country G or I have visited and then I wrote "Mommy" or "Daddy" to show which one of us has been there.
I figured it would help Gv make a connection to the different countries, if she knew one of us had seen it:
I colored in the country names in rainbow colors (of course), which led to a fun, impromptu game of "what color is the letter "t" followed by "what letter is blue."
I had this plan to draw a grid on the driveway with chalk, then have Gv follow my directions to move from one corner of the grid to the other. We had several days of rain, so I moved the plan inside and we just used our kitchen tiles as our grid (I had to stick post-its on each one, though, because she wasn't quite getting the concept of standing in the "box" of each tile).
Instead of telling her to "take two steps east" (which I'll do, when she's older), I just asked her to take one or two steps forward, backward, to the left, or to the right.
We had fun laughing through this game and I DID take a photo, but for some reason, I just can't find it, so you'll have to picture it all in your mind, until I do.
Geez, Louise, now I can't find my photo of the next activity...I am losing my mind, apparently.
We made a poster of our neighborhood. I'd printed photos of places like our church, the library, the grocery store and G's school. Gv glue them all down in their general locations, then we drew in things like friends' houses, stop signs and lights, our car, and even Gv.
She used a toy car to travel around town and "visit" all her usual haunts, which was lots of fun.
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| The remains of her poster, which she continues to play with, but has since ripped off all the photos and stuck them someplace "special" that I am not privy to at the moment... |
I gave Gv all sorts of other maps to play with this week: AAA state maps (which we marked special locations on using stickers), Google Earth maps for her to color and mark up, parks and attractions (like Sea World) for her to look at, as well as a globe.
We also had our first Passport to Fun "trip," so our "travels" to Canada worked out perfectly for this week, as well.
Finally, we did one of my favorite activities that I'd used in my classroom. After reading Me on the Map, we created this:
I measured our paper plate, then drew circles with decreasing diameters (an inch smaller at a time) on construction paper (in rainbow colors, of course).
Gv cut them all out, we hole-punched everything to line up at the top and then threaded it all onto a ring.
I printed out a photo of Gv for her to cut and glue onto the "Me" page, then printed a zoomed-in photo of our house from Google Earth for her to cut and add to the "My House" page:
For the "My City" page, I printed a cute graphic for the state of FL (whoops, forgot a photo of that page) and stuck a star sticker on our city's location.
This graphic (there's one for all the states) went on the "My State" page:
We used this for the "My Country" page:
This went on our "My Continent" page:
And this cute graphic (page 9 of the "Continent Kids" pack) went on the "My Planet" page:
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| Hmmm...she colored in Africa as "hers" on this picture...clearly we have some work still to do! |
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.
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