Syncopated Mama: Latticed Learning: Week 31

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

Jesus' life just prior to Easter (pages 385-390 & 409-426 in this Bible and 273-279 in this one)

Memory Verses

Philippians 4:8 & Psalm 118:1 - These are the thirteenth & fourteenth 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

Deserts/Bats & other nocturnal animals/Africa

Shape

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

Number

10 (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

Bringing the Rain to Kapiti Plain is a repeating-rhyme book that shares a fascinating folktale from Africa.

Bat's Big Game is a cute little story with adorable illustrations that's sure to put a smile on your face (as well as lead into a discussion on whether bats are birds or animals).

Rhinos for Lunch and Elephants for Supper! is a funny fable from East Africa with enjoyable illustrations, to boot.

Honey...Honey...Lion! - I'm not generally a huge fan of Jan Brett (some teachers go absolutely crazy over this author!), but I do appreciate the extra details in the side-pictures on each page (it's like a little preview!) as well as the use of onomatopoeia throughout.

Why the Sun and the Moon Live in the Sky is an old creation folk tale, told in simple style. A fun activity to go along with this would be to make masks that match those in the 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:

Think About Such Things & Give Thanks to the Lord from this album helped Gv learn our memory verses.

This album was pretty appropriate for the week.

So was Zacchaeus off of this album.

This song was, too, although I was a little worried that Carmen's dramatic style might be a bit much for Gv (it wasn't).

This album, by the label I lauded here, was great, as well.

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 has been popular the past few weeks and includes the story of Lazarus.

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

Gv continued to explore different things on this site.

This movie and this one were appropriate.

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 some of the things Jesus did during the days leading up to Holy Week:

We created our own little Lazarus from a toilet paper tube.

This couldn't be simpler: just glue on a couple of googly eyes, then cut a few strips of toilet paper to wrap around the tube (a drop of glue keeps it all in place).

We played this Lazarus cup game.

We re-purposed our Jonah from this week by wrapping the little guy in a bit of toilet paper.

"Lazarus, come out!"

There he is!

Gv enjoyed playing with this lift-the-flap Lazarus printable.

Gv wasn't interested in coloring this, but she did have fun flipping the flap & calling for Lazarus. And in case you're wondering, all that stuff on the back side of the flap is a list of former state standards, because we reuse all our paper around her (we only use "new" paper if we have to - like for a mailing form or something).

Then we made this Lazarus bread, which is something Greek Orthodox Christians traditionally make on the Saturday before Palm Sunday.

While you brush the oil over these little guys, you can make a connection with the anointing of the dead.

Of course I didn't follow this recipe exactly. I used whole wheat flour, whey instead of water, omitted the sugar and anise, and used raisins for the eyes. I also was not able to use my stand mixer to make this dough, because while G and I did take the whole thing apart, find and order the broken gear, and clean out and re-grease the innards, we have yet to put it all back together again to see if it'll actually work. But guess what, you can still make this with just your own two hands!

We did pages 2 & 3 of this printable to emphasize the lesson learned from Mary & Martha.

Not all of these choices apply to us at the moment, but the printable still worked fine to get the point across that our focus should be on God first, then all of our tasks.

I also realized that one of our favorite Valentine's Day crafts would be a perfect representation of the story, as well.

The combination of Mary's heart and Martha's hands

I've seen this jar-filling illustration before, but I loved the idea of using it to make the point that we should make room for Jesus before anything else.

If we're like Martha and fill up with tasks (rice) before Jesus (ball), then we won't have room for Jesus.

But if we put Jesus first and then do our tasks...

...then everything will fit!

We sang this song over and over and then made this little snowflake-style craft to represent it.

Apparently, Gv's world is one in need of Rogaine or Propecia! Fold a square of white paper 4 times & cut out a little person, with their body along the fold and the hands extending to the other side. Take your children and trace around the outer edges of their arms on blue construction paper to make a circle. Cut it out, then cut some random continent shapes from green paper to make the world. Add some eyes and a mouth (& maybe some hair!) to each of the kids and write your verse on their bodies. Glue everything down.

I haven't come up with a way to make these with the type of food we have around our house, but they sure are cute!

We made two Zacchaeus crafts: this one and this one.

This was such a simple way to make a craft interactive - Gv has still not tired of sending Zacchaeus up and down that tree!

Trace your child's arm on brown paper, cut it out & glue it down, then glue down squares of green tissue paper for leaves. We used an extra Zacchaeus from the previous activity, then Gv asked where Jesus was, so we hunted up our puppet from this week and stuck him in a little slit I cut in the paper at the bottom.

I cut a little vessel out of felt, added some drops of essential oil to it, and then pinned it to Gv's shirt to remind her of the story of the woman who anointed Jesus with costly oil.

We went with wild orange - what scent would you choose?

We also rustled up a couple of old grocery sacks to make this craft for the same story.

The clear bag (produce sack) gives a glassy effect, the brown bag represents the oil. Just cut out pieces slightly larger than the jug, smear some glue over the whole thing, and bunch up the bags in the appropriate places.

We also did several things (besides reading books) to correspond to our desert/Africa topic:

Our "trip" to Africa coincided with this week, which was pretty handy. Click here to see what we did.

We played a dice game using page 7 of pack 3 of this pack of printables.

We've played different versions of this game before and Gv always enjoys it. This time, we each rolled two dice and added them up (just counted all the dots) to find out which spot we could color. If we rolled a repeat, that just meant the turn went to the other player. We were stuck forever at the end trying to get 12, but finally got one 6, so we just kept rolling and rolling the other die until it turned up 6, as well.

We did the paper towel activity from here (other cute ideas, too!)

Take 2 paper towels. Lay one out flat and fold the other up, accordion-style, like a cactus. Then saturate them both with a few squirts of a water bottle.

Set the paper towels out in the sun for about 30 minutes, then come back and check them. The flat towel is now completely dried out...

...but the folded towel is still wet. It holds the water in, just like a cactus!

Together, we made this mosaic lizard.

Gv chose the lizard color and then we just used paper scraps from one of the earlier projects. Gv insisted on drawing in details on the lizard, which I thought was a cute touch. She also very strategically placed all of the back-left leg squares.

Gv worked on a pattern bead snake.

Gv insisted that this snake neede a tongue, just like the one we made way back in week 2.

And then we combined the ideas found here and here to make a little bat buddy:

Fold a coffee filter into fourths and cut the wing design. Color a design in marker, then grab a squirt bottle of water and spray it up good to make the colors run.

This little bat comes already loaded with a mouth!

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 31