Syncopated Mama: Latticed Learning: Week 21

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

Bible Lesson

Jonah (pages 257-264 in this Bible and 181-185 in this one)

Memory Verse

Proverbs 22:6 - This is the first song on this album, which I've raved about before. I'm also creating cards for this second set of verses and will let you know when they're available.

Until then, you can find the first set here.

We post these on the fridge (and then add them to a mini photo album from the local dollar store at the end of the week).

Saint

Ursula (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

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

Topic to Explore

Weather

Shape

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

Number

20 (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

Raindrop Plop! is one of Gv's all-time favorite books, so I knew it would probably be what we read the most this week. (Luckily, I'm still not sick of reading it yet, despite the approximately 7,392 times I've read it to her)

Bringing the Rain to Kapiti Plain brings a unique perspective to the weather as well as a repetitive, rhyming verse.

Sun Snow Stars Sky is a good, all-around introduction to weather and the seasons - plus, its colorful illustrations kept drawing Gv back to flip through all week long.

The Wind Blew is another fun rhyming book. Gv enjoyed completing the repetitive parts as this story progressed.

The Snowy Day was always one of my favorite books as a child - and despite the fact that Gv hasn't ever been in snow, she enjoyed it, as well.

It Looked Like Split Milk was another of my childhood favorites that Gv was fond of.

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:

Train Up a Child from this album helped Gv learn our memory verse

This song by the Newsboys seemed especially appropriate

The North Wind from this album

The title song from this album was great - especially because Gv enjoyed the movie so much, earlier this year

This song from Bambi also fit in perfectly

I'm a Little Snowflake from the album I wrote about here was great, too

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

This video matched up with our Bible story.

Gv did "U" things on this site.

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

We didn't watch it, but this movie would have been great

This was a bit above Gv's head, but it was short enough to hold her interest anyway

We explored this site and also this one bit to learn more about weather

How We Played

We did a few things to learn more about Jonah:

I first printed out this cute mini book for Gv to cut out and stick in a dollar store photo album.

I draped a blue sheet over some furniture to create a "fish fort" - where Gv could go to read and hang out all week.

Made all the more fun with small paper plates & construction paper eyes!

Then I made this little Jonah in the fish clothespin for her to play with:

Gulp!

Hi, Jonah!

We decorated one of these little wooden pegs to look like Jonah, shoved him in a balloon, blew it up and decorated it like a fish:

The fish, but where's Jonah?

There he is!

I made this challenging (for Gv) Jonah-in-the-fish cup game for her, with another of these little wooden pegs, a clear plastic cup, and some yarn:

Poke a hole in the bottom, thread the yarn through,then tie a big knot. Tie the other end around Jonah. You could even add fins and a tail to this fish cup, but we were content (read: too lazy) with googly eyes.

Then, inspired by this creation (which is still going strong as one of Gv's favorite toys), I searched and found this template to create a fish out of paper plates.

We used one of the friends from the fiery furnace a couple of weeks ago as Jonah and then added in some little plastic fish we had hanging around:

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

I printed out this colorful weather chart, stuck it in a black frame from the dollar store, and hung it under the rainbow map from a few weeks ago in Gv's room:

I glued the arrows onto thick cardboard (from a shipping box) and then stuck them onto the frame with fun-tack - easy for Gv to move around by herself!

Using this cute display as a guide, I drew some little cloud people for Gv to cut out, hang up, and play with:

We both fell in love with the rainy rhymes I found on this site. I was also excited to see so many other great musical resources here, as well.

We played each little video, then sang along, then I'd go play each one on the piano for Gv to sing along with each day, too.

I loved how there were fun actions to get her moving at the same time!

I printed out this weather graph for us to fill in each day, which we'll keep up with for the rest of the month:

I came across this neat idea and since I still had rainbow (of course!) strips from Gv's party last year, it was a snap to tape them up along her table.

I let her choose which things we'd dangle from each strip, although she kept wanting to add something to the yellow one, too.

Before we started "the wind," I asked her which one she thought would move the slowest/least. She picked the green strip, with the crayon. Then I asked which would move the fastest/most. She picked the purple one, with the coin.

I just took a book and waved it in front of the papers really fast to create the "wind."

She was surprised to see them all moving so differently. Of course, the yellow one moved the most, followed by the red feather, then the purple coin. And the orange clothespin didn't really move at all, with the crayon just barely moving. The blue cotton swab was right in the middle.

I thought her predictions were pretty good, for a two-year-old.

Gv furiously waving the book back & forth to make "wind." Note the stagnate paper strips. It took mommy-muscles to really get the wind blowing.

I loved this idea when I saw it. It was easy to make and I just rolled the pipe cleaner up a bit at the bottom, to not only make it match the mercury better, but also to provide a bit more of a handle for Gv to use to move the temperature up and down.

I printed out weather and seasons cards for Gv to cut and add to a dollar store photo album.

We created this water cycle bag to hang up in a sunny window and watch all week long. It was a huge hit!

We made a cloud in a jar...

We keep our ice maker turned off, so I just used one of those cooler ice blocks on top

...and then a tornado in a jar...

Lots of foam because I shook it all up really well to mix everything in the beginning. Next time, I'd only shake it a bit and not put quite as much food coloring in the water. It was still cool to watch, though

I couldn't resist making these neat raindrop sun catchers. Gv loved peeling and shaving off the crayons onto the wax paper:

And, finally, I thought this activity would be perfect to go along with Raindrop Plop! I heeded the given advice and had her drop the paint onto the blank paper, then had her glue the umbrella on afterwards.

We just used light blue construction paper for the sky, then dropped blue food coloring mixed with a little water onto the paper. It didn't turn out quite as "pretty" as the guide we used, but it was still fun to make!

Whew! It was a busy week, but one full of fun!

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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Latticed Learning: Week 21