Welcome back to another installment of Latticed Learning! Today I'll be sharing the twenty-sixth 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
Jesus' early miracles (pages 314-317 and 324-333 in this Bible)Memory Verse
Deuteronomy 5:16 - This is the sixth 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.
We post these on the fridge (and then add them to a mini photo album from the dollar store at the end of the week).
Until set two is out, you can find the first set of cards here.
Saint
Zita (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
Z (Print out your free "Z" phonics card here!)Topic to Explore
Zoo AnimalsShape
Octagon (I'm kind of going in order of vertices/sides and each one will last for several weeks.)Number
5 (Now focusing on writing the numbers, since our first go-round took care of counting and recognizing them).
I printed four of these to a page, then slipped the sheets into a page protector and let Gv trace the numbers with a wet-erase marker.
Best Books We Read This Week
The Adventures of Albert, the Running Bear is a cute story about a bear who begins life in a circus before being transferred to a zoo. He starts performing his circus act in his cage when he discovers the crowd will throw him all sorts of yummy junk food in appreciation. When the zookeeper puts him on a restrictive diet, he busts out to find himself running a marathon through Central Park...
Good Night, Gorilla is one of our favorite books. I've always loved how it tells its story with such few words and there are plenty of little details to notice on each page.
Let's Go to the Zoo is a fabulous flap book that Gv has enjoyed pretty much since birth. It's fun to see her at a new stage of interaction with it now.
Zany Zoo is a collection of silly poems that shines the spotlight on all sorts of different animals.
When We Went to the Zoo begins with a cool map of the zoo to explore and then goes on to tell a story about one family's trip to their local zoological park. I love what turns out to be their favorite part of the excursion and think it's so neat what the kids do to the map at the end of the book.
Other Great Books We Read
Zoo-LookingDear Zoo
Put Me in the Zoo
My Visit to the Zoo
If I Ran the Zoo
Going to the Zoo
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:
Honor Your Father and Mother from this album helped Gv learn our memory verse.
This CD has become one of our favorites and is perfect to listen to this week.
The Four-Legged Zoo off the math album I talk about here matches this week, as well.
Going to the Zoo off of this album is 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.
This CD has become one of our favorites and is perfect to listen to this week.
The Four-Legged Zoo off the math album I talk about here matches this week, as well.
Going to the Zoo off of this album is 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
Gv did "Z" things on this site.
We watched this clip and a few of the others for the letter "Z."
How We Played
We did a few things to learn more about Jesus' first miracles:I remembered how we turned the water to red blood during this week and used that same trick to illustrate how Jesus turned the water into wine.
I just put a couple drops each of red and blue food coloring in the base of a container and then when Gv poured the water into it - voilà!
G and I carried Gv around in a sheet like this:
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| I couldn't figure out how to take a picture of this - since I was having to help G carry Gv - but then remembered our good friends doing this with Gv last summer, so, photo crisis averted! |
and then lowered her down through a "hole in the roof" (opening in a pile of couch cushions) like the friends did for the man who was healed by Jesus in the other miracle we read about.
We also did several things (besides reading books) to correspond to our zoo topic:
I printed out this set and this set of animal movement cards to stick in our dice and play with all week.
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| Slithering like a snake |
I also printed this cute book on directions for Gv to complete (with some help), since she seemed to be in a bit more of a coloring mood this week.
Gv loves giraffes and loves when we trace her hands and make something out of it, so this craft was loads of fun:
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| I loved how she made one a girl by adding spots as a bow! |
I just traced her arm from the elbow down on yellow construction paper, then she cut out orange spots and glued on those and some googly eyes, then I drew on the nose and mouth.
We spent some time recreating the yoga poses on this website.
Gv measured the length of animals in her books with some math manipulatives I'd had in my classroom:
We made a zoo cage for her stuffed animals:
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| Just take a clothes basket and weave yarn through the holes to make bars, then fill it with critters. |
Gv decorated a sheet of black construction paper with all sorts of googly eyes to match one of our favorite pages from Good Night, Gorilla.
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| Gv insisted that we find "Mommy & Daddy" and "Baby" eyes to match up for each set |
I printed out a few pages from these adorable printables, mainly just to see where Gv was at with some of these concepts.
She shocked me by completing this beginning letter sounds sheet all by herself:
I knew she'd enjoy counting up these animals and finding the corresponding number:
There was one on a simple pattern sequence:
I also printed out a sheet on syllables, just to use as an introduction, but tossed it out after realizing that it was way too advanced for her right now.
Her favorite activity was the zoo animal cube, which we took turns tossing in a game and colored in the matching graph to see which animal would win.
Gv did this animal sorting activity:
I just printed the sheet out, then she cut, sorted, and glued it all down onto some construction paper.
And finally, we investigated some of the websites listed here to take a virtual trip to the zoo and then did this scavenger hunt to find different animals.
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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