Latticed Learning: Week 18

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Welcome back to another installment of Latticed Learning!  Today I'll be sharing the eighteenth 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

Esther (pages 240-246 in this Bible)

Memory Verse

Romans 3:23/John 3:16 - This is the eighteenth 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

Rose (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

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

Topic to Explore

Art 

Shape

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

Number

17 (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

Katie and the Mona Lisa is easily one of Gv's all-time favorite books.  I wrote about this wonderful series in this post and we want to own them all!

 

The Art Book for Children (Books One & Two) is amazing.  Large photos of some of the world's best artwork adorns every page along with interesting little tidbits of information about each artist or work.

 

A Child's Introduction to Art is equally wonderful and also interjects art tips amongst all the art appreciation information.



Art & Max contains illustrations that are works of art in themselves, besides being the perfect accompaniments to a fun story.

 

The Art Lesson reads like fiction, but is obviously the story of the artist/author himself, Tomie dePaola.  Who doesn't love his books?

Other Great Books We Read

Katie's Sunday Afternoon, Katie and the Sunflowers, Katie and the Waterlily Pond, Katie Meets the Impressionists & Katie and the British Artists

What Makes a Rainbow

The Day the Crayons Quit & The Day the Crayons Came Home

The Crayon Box That Talked

I Am a Rainbow

Color Dance

Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?

A Rainbow of My Own

Baby Bear Sees Blue

The Rainbow Book

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:

For All Have Sinned from this album helped Gv learn our memory verse

A Masterpiece and I Like Art from two of the amazing albums I talk about here.

Several songs from this jewel-toned singer touched on colors and the rainbow.

Fuzzy & Blue (& Orange) and Bein' Green from this album.

Rainbow Connection and another rendition of Bein' Green from this.

I played the entire soundtrack to this movie, because it just made total sense.

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 watched this and this to fill out the Esther story a bit.

Gv did "R" things on this site.

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

I had big plans to introduce Gv to this classic movie, but our television broke the week after Christmas and we don't have a replacement yet, so the screening has been postponed.

How We Played

We did a few things to learn more about Esther:

We first printed out these finger puppets:

and then made the crown in this pack (page 3) to wear while using the puppets to re-enact the Esther story:

Gv enjoyed standing these characters up on their own more than wearing them on her fingers

We used this print-out to dress Esther for her big feast:

This seemed simple, but Gv had loads of fun cutting out all the tiny pieces (I went back and trimmed everything up) and then gluing them all down on the card.

and then got all dolled up in a fancy dress and crown before sitting down before our own "feast":

Feast prepared by Queen Gv herself - she even put fancy tablecloths on our step-stool tables before covering them with "food!"

I'd come across this courage activity and thought Gv would find it pretty fun to do.  I think she had more fun squeezing all the water out of the bag at the end than anything else, but she was definitely surprised to see that no water escaped when I shoved the pencils into it!

Tip: although the water stays in despite the pencil-jabbing, do this over a sink!

And finally, I thought this craft was adorable, but we only use foil when we camp and I was too lazy to go fish the roll of shiny stuff out of the camping tub from the garage, so we'll just save that one for next year.

We also did several things (besides reading books) to correspond to our art topic:

I printed page 18 of this pack as a fun review of colors.

I followed the idea here and we made our own Keith Haring "dancing" art:

I had to completely cut & assemble the brad figures.  Gv positioned & traced the figures herself (in pencil) onto construction paper & then I went over the lines in black marker.  She cut them out & glued them down on her own.

After seeing this idea, we created a Matisse-inspired work:

I cut out the orange piece, just to give her the idea of what to do, then she did the rest.

This post gave me the idea to create little secondary-color bugs for Gv to hang and reference.  I used construction paper to make them, then Gv decided they had to all have some googly eyes!

I took three index cards, folded them and cut out butterfly shapes, then had Gv squirt a drop of color on either wing to fold back together and mix up:

The purple didn't get mixed up as well as the other two, but this was still a very effective activity and loads of fun for Gv - I can see making more of these colorful butterflies to decorate with, once spring arrives.

I'd come across this cool Fibonacci art project.  Even though the math aspect was lost on Gv at this point in time, I knew she'd still have fun playing with the neat (& safe!) compass G had brought home from his classroom.

I did the orange circle for an example, then Gv did the rest herself.

We channeled Piet Mondrain and made our own modern plate masterpiece:

I couldn't get past my OCD tendencies on this one, so I cut out a variety of primary-color rectangles and squares (along with some black strips), but then the rest was up to Gv to choose which ones to use, where to place them, and then do the gluing.

I love pointillism, so we dabbled a bit in that style.  First, we created a color wheel on a paper plate, using a pencil eraser as our "brush":

Yes, I totally sectioned the plate off into 8 pieces before realizing that we only needed 6...that's what I get for trying to eat lunch and do something else at the same time!

Gv did all the painting herself (I held my hands over the surrounding sections of the plate, to contain her jabbing) and I thought she filled in each section nicely, but I wasn't super-happy with the way the secondary colors turned out...

...until I stood on the other side of the room, where the effect became much more clear!

Clear color mixing, despite my fuzzy-photo-taking skills...and yes, that is still the same collection of dust up there above the fireplace, thanks for noticing!

Once we saw how cool the plate turned out, we decided to try our hands at an actual scene:

I sketched this drawing in pencil, then Gv and I filled in the paint together.  Her painting patience was running out, but it was still fun for her to see how the picture turned out, with only dots of color.

I had also planned for us to make one of these Pollack-like paintings, but Gv just wasn't in the mood to paint any more, so I let it go.  

I am thinking, however, that I might have to create something like this myself on a canvas to hang up somewhere around the house.  It would be the perfect way to display our family Bible verse!

Gv's already seen a fair amount of Chihuly pieces in person, so I got all excited when I ran across this idea.  

I didn't think Gv colored her coffee filter enough (mine's the rainbow one - big surprise, right?), but it still turned out really cool:

Color one side of a coffee filter with marker, cut around the outer edge to make it irregular, drape it over a cup, then spray the heck out of it with spray starch.

After the starch has dried, remove them from the cup - don't you just love how the colors have bled?

Then stick them up on the wall by their bases and admire how cool it all looks!

I took Gv to "visit" some of my favorite museums around the world, like the Louvre, Musée d'Orsay, Museo del Prado, Tate Modern, National Gallery, Art Institute of Chicago, Rijksmuseum, and Alte Pinakothek.  

Then we went and visited a real local art museum in person:

We finished up by each coloring in one of our favorite masterpieces from the week.  You can find a bunch of free, printable coloring pages here, here and here.

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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