Syncopated Mama: Latticed Learning: Week 27

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

Sermon on the Mount (pages 318-323 in this Bible and 229-233 in this one)

Memory Verse

Galatians 6:9 - This is the seventh 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

We've gone through them all and will just continue to flip through our mini photo album of these these cuter-than-cute cards until we go through them all again next year.

Letter

We've now gone through each of these, too. At the moment, we'll just finish out the year by continuing to talk about the letters and sounds and flip through our mini photo album of our phonics cards. You can get your own set of these phonics cards here.

Topic to Explore

Bugs

Shape

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

Number

6 (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 Beautiful Butterfly Book, The Spectacular Spider Book, The Beautiful Bee Book, & The Beautiful Beetle Book are all lovely books with plenty to do on each page (feel a fuzzy caterpillar, turn a wheel to discover a life cycle, lift up some wings to see what's underneath, or peer through shimmery plastic to see which beetles love the water).

Butterfly Life Cycle & Ladybug Life Cycle from this set are great for presenting facts in small chunks for the small set.

Bugs, Beetles & Butterflies was one of our favorite books on our big campout last year - it's a great overview of all sorts of creepy-crawly critters.

Inch by Inch is all about a little inchworm measuring the animals around his home. It's a classic by Leo Lionni that I have always loved.

Beetle Bop is not only great for becoming an expert on all things beetle, but is a fantastic book for focusing on adjectives, too.

Ladybug Girl isn't really about bugs, but a little girl who dresses up as a ladybug and sets out for a day of play. It was the favorite book of a very special former student of mine, so the copy she gave to us when Gv was born is extra-special, too.

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:

If We Don't Lose Heart from this album helped Gv learn our memory verse.

Several of the songs off of this folksy album were perfect for this week's buggy theme.

Butterfly Driving a Truck and Spider John from the fun album I shared here are great choices, too.

And of course you'll need to spend plenty of time singing this song all week - it's mandatory, and the version I shared is only one of the bazillion that are out there!

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 video, this one, and this one to review letters and numbers.

Gv continued to explore different things on this site.

We watched some Magic School Bus episodes: In a Beehive, Gets Ants in its Pants, Butterfly and the Bog Beast and Spins a Web.

How We Played

We did a few things to learn more about the Sermon on the Mount:

First, even though Gv already knows this prayer (we say it a lot around here, plus she spent time reviewing it back on week 7 when it was her memory verse), I decided to create a printable that we could stick in a frame and hang in her room.

I hung it up under the pastel-colored U.S. map that I printed out from week 17 and we just love it!

You can print out your own copy here for free!

We did an activity to go along with the wise man who built his house upon a rock:

First, I stuck a plain white paper inside a sheet protector. Then I drew a house on some rocks on one side, using a permanent marker, and a house on some sand on the other side, using a wet-erase marker.

Fancy artwork, huh? Hey, it got the point across!

We placed the whole thing on a towel and I gave Gv a squirt bottle full of water to simulate the storm. When it was time, she went to town, squirting both houses like crazy and was so surprised to see how the house on the rocks stood firm, while the one on the sand just washed away!

We also made this Bee-atitudes flower, to help her remember the Beatitudes:

I drew the flower petal shapes on construction paper for Gv to cut out and then glue together. Next, I printed out these cute little critters representing each trait for her to glue on the matching petal. I wrote the label next to each one (and wrote the blessing on the back). Finally, we added a little bee I'd drawn to the whole thing - to remember to "bee" someone with a good attitude (& also because of our bug theme this week!)

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

I printed out the faces of this cute die (& slipped them into one of our foam dice pieces) so we could act out all sorts of buggy moves.

Flapping like a butterfly

Gv and I made a little bug hat for her to wear, then I gave her a straw to use as her proboscis to suck the nectar (juice) out of a construction paper flower (covering a cup), just like a butterfly.

She insisted that the bug have red eyes. This is all just taped construction paper, with pipe cleaner antennae (wrapping around pom poms at the ends).

This is a great trick to use anytime you need your little one to drink something nasty - she slurped it all right up and asked for seconds!

She also used tweezers to transfer yellow pom pom "pollen" pieces from a flower (I just used the same one as I did for the butterfly nectar) to a honeycomb (ice cube tray - you could also use an egg carton).

We played a fun bug-catching dice game. You'll find it here. I printed out the three pieces we needed in black and white, then we colored them in (to save color ink).

We also played the game a bit differently than suggested. We took turns rolling a die, then we got to add that number of bugs to our jars (which made the game go faster!)

We made a little toilet paper roll fly guy to be the mascot for one of our books:

Draw a silly nose and mouth onto an empty toilet paper tube. Glue on some over-sized eyes (I used craft foam, but construction paper would work fine), wax-paper wings, and pipe cleaner arms, legs & antennae.

We made a little dragonfly out of a plastic spoon:

Take a black plastic spoon and glue on two wax-paper wings (I took this photo before the glue was dry, as you can see) and a couple of googly eyes. So easy!

Then we created a red-ant puppet:

Construction paper, googly eyes and pipe cleaner legs all glued onto a craft stick.

And then we made a black ant out of Play-Doh:

Black Play-Doh body, pipe cleaner legs, and who-can-ever-get-enough googly eyes!

I punched some holes around the edge of a sturdy paper plate and randomly numbered them on one side:

Then scattered the alphabet randomly next to the holes on the other side before handing Gv a ball of yarn to lace up her own web with:

I cut eight slits on the end of a toilet paper roll, then we folded them back, dipped it all in black paint, and Gv stamped out a couple of spiders:

Add googly eyes. Always add googly eyes.

Gv got out her little collection of plastic bugs, then sorted them by color:

She was about to sort them by critter type as well, but then got distracted by what I was setting up for her to do next:

I wound some yarn through the holes of a mini-milk crate I'd had in my classroom, then buried her bugs in the bottom of this "web."

I handed her some tweezers and she went to work trying to extract all the bugs:

A bonus activity of her own devising followed: she pulled all of the yarn out of the holes, then weaved it all back through again!

I printed out this cute collections of bugs (the "count the room" portion), cut out the cards, and hid them around the room for Gv to find and count up.

Gv was all geared up to cut and paste this little "bug or not" sorting activity, but she lost interest after only gluing half the squares down.

We headed outside to see what we could check off this list on our own little bug scavenger hunt:

Perusing the list

We found a tiny grasshopper! (at least it looked like a grasshopper)

Our completed sheet. Gv made the "x"s and I added the bugs we found that weren't on the list.

And finally, we played a game using p. 45 of the PreK pack found here.

She'd enjoyed a similar game back in week 20, so I knew she'd like this. We colored the ladybug together, then each chose a color (although Gv switched from red to pink, partway through) and took turns rolling the die and coloring in the number. If a number came up that wasn't free, the other player just took a turn. I actually won this time!

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 27