Welcome back to another installment of Latticed Learning! Today I'll be sharing the thirtieth 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
The parables of Jesus (pages 351-356, 379-384 & 391-404 in this Bible and 265-269 & 283-299 in this one)Memory Verses
Proverbs 18:24b & Psalm 139:13 & 14 - These are the eleventh & twelfth songs 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
Ponds/rivers/frogsShape
Octagon (I'm kind of going in order of vertices/sides and each one will last for several weeks.)Number
9 (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
At the Pond is a really different type of book - a close-up photo is presented of a pond creature along with a clue to its identity. Then the reader gets to turn the page and find out what it is. It's great for not only presenting plenty of facts, but really engaging the reader, as well.
Fish is Fish is a cute little story about a minnow and tadpole. When they get older, fish's frog friend tells him all about the wonders he sees out in the big, wide, world, but little fish's interpretations of the creatures aren't quite on the mark.
Five Green and Speckled Frogs is such a fun song to sing. I love the silly illustrations in this version, but I think Gv most loves the fact that the final page of this book includes sheet music for the song. Oh, yes, my piano-playing skills are really being put to the test...
Fat Frogs on a Skinny Log - if you're looking for alliteration or adjectives, this book's for you! It's also sure to make you laugh as you watch the scene unfold while these fat frogs all cram themselves on this one tiny little log...
Down By the Cool of the Pool - repetition, rhyme and sound effects fill the pages of this wacky tale of a frog and all of his dancing friends. Plus, just look at that cover - doesn't it just scream fun?
Other Great Books We Read
A Frog in the BogFrog's Lunch
Frog and Toad Are Friends
Jump, Frog, Jump
In the Small, Small Pond
Beaver Gets Lost
Curious Critters
Same or Different?
The River Grows
My River
Little Otter's Big Journey
The Giving Tree
And the entire Froggy collection (yes, we have them all!)
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:
There is a Friend & You Knit Me Together from this album helped Gv learn our memory verses.
There were plenty of perfect songs on the Frog Trouble album that I mentioned in this post.
This album continued to be appropriate.
Even if we hadn't watched the movie, this soundtrack was fun to listen to this week.
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.
There were plenty of perfect songs on the Frog Trouble album that I mentioned in this post.
This album continued to be appropriate.
Even if we hadn't watched the movie, this soundtrack was fun to listen to this week.
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
Both this video and this one matched our Bible stories.
We also enjoyed this video on the Parable of the Lost Sheep.
We watched this video, this one, and this one to review letters and numbers.
Gv continued to explore different things on this site and especially enjoyed this song.
I'd debated whether or not Gv would enjoy this movie yet, but then G so kindly shared his cold with us, so we went ahead and gave it a go while we lounged around on the couch one day.
We learned that we have access to our own ABC Mouse for free when we use it at our local library, so we've been making an extra trip each week to try it out.
The first week, we just used the library's desktops, and besides not wanting Gv to use headphones with it, she had a difficult time maneuvering the mouse by herself.
The second week, I realized we could use our own device, as long as we were there, so I installed the app on my Nook and she had a much easier time with it all. (Plus, we could sit off in a corner with the volume turned low and not have to worry about headphones.)
Be sure to see what types of learning apps are available at your local branch - just another reason to love the library so much!
How We Played
We did a few things to learn more about the parables of Jesus:To illustrate the parable of the fisherman's net, I filled a container with water and we put in some of Gv's plastic toy fish and bug critters.
Then Gv used my kitchen spider as a "net" to separate all the good fish from the other things in the water.
For the parable of the Good Samaritan, we did a bit of dramatic play.
Gv pretended that one of her dolls was the injured man and had some stuffed animals pass by and refuse to help.
Then Gv pretended to be the Samaritan who stopped to help. She decided that the best way to help would be to make the injured baby comfortable and then "check her out" with her doctor's kit.
I also traced Gv's hand and together we turned each finger into a character from the story:
 |
| The injured traveler, the Good Samaritan, and the ones who walked on by (great, now this song is stuck in my head!) |
To help Gv better relate to the parable of the lost sheep, we played "hide & sheep."
To do this, I hid her little sheep somewhere and she had to hunt everywhere to find it.
To help Gv better understand the parable of the prodigal son, we made this:
 |
| This craft is pretty straightforward - I traced Gv's hands in brown construction paper, cut a sheet of blue paper in half lengthwise, then cut out a round head. Gv glued on some googly eyes and drew on a mouth, then she stuck on some tissue paper hair. |
 |
| A big hug of forgiveness! |
Even though the parable of the mustard seed wasn't one that we read, I couldn't help but give Gv a real mustard seed and then show her a bunch of photos (I just Googled it) of what happens when that tiny little seed grows up.
We also didn't read about the parable of the leaven, but I talked about it a bit and then Gv made this fun bread in bag recipe all by herself.
 |
| Vigorously kneading her bread. |
 |
| Success! (she gobbled up one of the loaves right out of the oven) |
We also did several things (besides reading books) to correspond to our pond topic:
Gv went fishing for magnet letters in her own little "pond" bucket:
 |
| The original bucket I gave her kind of swallowed her up... |
 |
| So we switched it out for one that was more manageable. Her fishing pole was just a paper clip tied to the end of some yarn. |
Then I made her a little duck hat and she donned her special duck robe:
 |
| All ducked out - I just used construction paper to create a Mo Willems-inspired duckling hat |
We used that same plastic container full of water from the net parable activity so Gv's rubber duckies could float around in their own pond.
Then I gave her a squirt bottle full of water so she could try and move them around by spraying them.
Then we removed the ducks and I zipped a sandwich bag over one of Gv's hands so she could see what a difference webbed feet made in the water:
We ate "frog on a log" snacks:
 |
| Not much different from "ants on a log," except we smeared the peanut butter onto a carrot and then stood the raisins up nice and tall before chowing down on it all. |
I printed out pages 4 and 6 of these cute pond printables for Gv to do.
 |
| It was interesting to see how Gv chose to do this. When I saw her going for the "1" to circle, my instinct was to stop her and correct her. So glad I didn't, because she obviously knew what she was doing, even though it was different than how I would! |
 |
| This was another one of those cases where I tried something, just to see what she'd do with it, even though I was guessing it was way above her level. I asked her what the four pictures were, then I told her to find the word that matched the picture. She cut out the words, then picked one up, said the first letter's name and the sound it made, then looked at the pictures and figured out which word it must be. Another case of her surprising me with what she can do! |
Gv and I made our own version of Monet's Water Lilies (inspired by this).
 |
| Gv ended up adding some glitter at the end, which looks quite lovely, in person. |
She used watercolors to turn a cupcake liner green, then painted the swirly water background.
We snipped some chunks out of the flower and the lily pad, then glued it all down.
Finally, I saw this and created a 5 Frogs on a Log printable that you can use to make this fun toy:
Want to get your free copy of the printable, along with the instructions on how to make it? Just click on over 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.
Also, if you don't want to miss a single minute of great tips like this and all the fun around here, be sure to sign up for free updates and then look forward to having each post delivered right to your inbox.
Linked up with: Social Butterfly Sunday,What's for Dinner?, (mis)Adventures Monday, Family Joy Blog Link-Up, Literacy Musings Monday, Practical Mondays, Homeschool Nook Link Up, Happiness is Homemade, Merry Monday, Motivation Monday, Thoughtful Spot, What'd You Do This Weekend, Made for Kids, Meet Up Monday, Totally Terrific Tuesday, Little Learning Link Up,Tuesday Pinspiration,Let's Be Friends Blog Hop, Two Uses Tuesday, Hip Homeschool Hop, Lou Lou Girls Fabulous Party Tell it to Me Tuesday, Talented Tuesday, Tuesday Talk, Wonderful Wednesday, A Little Bird Told Me, WFMW, Everything Early Childhood, The Mommy Club, Creative Muster, Party in Your PJs, The Ladies Collective, A Little R&R Wednesdays, This Is How We Roll, Creative Ways, Hearts for Home, Creative Exchange, 100 Happy Days, Learn & Play Link Up, Shine Blog Hop, Yum Tum Linky, Try It Like It, No Rules Weekend Blog Party, Balanced & Healthy LInk Up, Thursday Favorite Things, Cozy Reading Spot, Party at My Place, I'm Lovin' It,Kitchen Fun & Crafty, Inspiration Spotlight, Home Matters, Pretty Pintastic Party, Weekend Potluck, Awesome Life Friday, Creative Collection, The Beautifully Creative Inspired , Family Fun Friday, Friday Frivolity, Bloggers Spotlight, Make My Saturday Sweet, Weekend Wind-Down Party,Friday Features Linky, Funtastic Friday , The Pinterest Game