Syncopated Mama: Latticed Learning, Week 34

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Welcome back to another installment of Latticed Learning! Today I'll be sharing the thirty-fourth 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 Early Church (pages 473-487 in this Bible and 333-339 in this one)

Memory Verse

Matthew 6:19-21 - This is the eighteenth 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

General science explorations

Shape

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

Number

13 (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

I Use Science Tools is a great introduction to the different tools we can use to discover more about the world around us.

Science with Light & Mirrors is typical Usborne greatness with loads of fun illustrations and blurbs about all sorts of subjects. Many of the activities were a bit advanced for Gv, but she still enjoyed looking through the book and it will be one for her to grow into.

On the Day You Were Born introduces ideas like gravity and migration in a natural way - focusing on what life on Earth was like on the day you were born. This would be a great book to add to a birthday present!

Everyday Science: Materials explores the physical properties of different objects around us.

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:

Where Your Treasure Is from this album helped Gv learn our memory verse.

This album was perfect for the week's theme.

We had fun singing song #1 on this album - I felt it was appropriate for learning about Pentecost, don't you?

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.

I've always loved the interactive clips on this BBC site.

We continued using ABC Mouse for free at our local library.

Be sure to see what types of learning apps are available at your local branch - just another reason to love the library so much!

We watched some random Magic School Bus episodes and had some science fun.

We also watched several of the alphabet songs on this channel.

How We Played

We did a few things to learn more about the early church:

First, Gv glued and glittered up a flame hat for Pentecost:

I cut a sheet of yellow construction paper in half to make the band, then cut out graduated flame shapes in yellow, orange and red. She glued them all down and glittered them up. We glued a craft stick to the back of the flame so that it would stand up better.

Then we made this Holy Spirit windsock:

Tape a sheet of red construction paper so that it forms a lengthwise cylinder, then glue a white dove on the front and strips of orange tissue paper streamers on the bottom.

We practiced the Apostle's Creed by adding these cute pages to one of our photo albums from the dollar store:

We made this little healed lame man (using this graphic as a guide) after we talked about some of the miracles the apostles performed:

Gv insisted on purple hair for this little dude. She colored that and his face and then decided her coloring time was done.

We just sliced the little guy in half with some scissors and then added a brad so that Gv could make him dance about.

We also did several things (besides reading books) to correspond to our general science topic. Basically, we were just exploring and playing with a bunch of different scientific ideas and activities:

First, we made crystals:

I used a white pipe cleaner to form "Gv," then hung it from a chopstick using dental floss

We dipped it into a jar full of water, dissolved borax and food coloring and let it sit for a day and got this (full directions here).

Then we hung it in a window to enjoy.

Next, we had fun watching water walk from one jar to another:

Take 3 identical jars. Fill two up with water and add food coloring (choose 2 different primary colors for a bonus lesson on color mixing), then stick the empty jar between them. Cut a paper towel in half lengthwise, fold each half twice lengthwise and then drape the towels from each of the full jars into the empty one. Make sure the towels are almost all the way to the bottom of the full jars.

Wait a day to see the center jar fill up with water from the other two! (Be sure to stick this in a prominent place, because Gv had fun constantly checking on the progress of the middle jar.)

We used sponges to do a little air pressure activity:

Stick two sponges inside a sandwich bag. Wedge a straw in between them and then tape the bag shut so that no air can escape. Blow the bag up through the straw, then squeeze. Find something light, like a pom pom, to direct the air at and watch it skitter across the surface it's resting upon.

Then, we investigated melting:

Fill a muffin tin with various objects, making sure to choose some that might get melty. Gv chose a coin, a rock, a Unifex cube, a foam circle, ice, and lots and lots of crayons. I added a bit of butter, some slivers of soap, and a couple chocolate chips.

Stick your muffin tray in a sunny spot and monitor it - after just 15 minutes, our butter and ice had pretty much completely melted.

After several hours, the ice had completely evaporated, the butter was just a layer of slime, the chocolate chips were gooey and the crayons were all melted together in big blobs (those were the most exciting to see!)

We checked out what would sink and float:

Gv chose some good things to test: a rock, a toy fish, a marble, a piece of pipe cleaner, a plastic ball, a rubber pencil gripper, a foam car, and a seed from a Sweetgum tree. She made pretty decent predictions for each one and was surprised to see the pipe cleaner sink when it became saturated.

And then we did a little water displacement activity, using a giant jar, water, and some rocks:

Draw a line where the water is (random grains of rice and friendly frog optional).

Plunk in some rocks (and optional frog) and see how much the water rises.

We'd done a salt-art project in the past, but we repeated that idea with Gv's name to really focus on how the salt/glue mixture gave the watercolors a "track" to race down:

Write a word or name on a sheet of colored paper, then let your little one trace it with glue. Shake salt over the top of it and give it plenty of time to dry.

Mix some watercolor paint (or food coloring) into a small cup of water, then use an eye dropper to drip spots of color onto the letters. Focus on how the color races along the glue/salt track.

We made some homemade watercolor paints:

We used an ice cube tray and also talked about how the primary colors combine to make the secondary colors. They all turned out great, although the purple ended up being a bit murky... Gv really got into mixing it all up with a craft stick (see how nice and neat each compartment is? {grin}) - we discovered that an up-and-down, butter-churning motion worked best to mix it all up.

We "took a look" at sound waves, by making some rice jump:

Stretch some plastic wrap tightly over a large bowl and sprinkle some rice on the top. Use a metal spoon to beat a metal baking pan or bowl next to (but not touching) the rice and watch the rice dance from the sound waves!

We dissected a bean:

Soak some beans overnight to soften them up. Gently rub the bean between your fingers to loosen the seed coat and remove it - "just like you take off your coat." You should be able to easily twist the bean open to see the embryo. We used a black bean (seed coat on left) and I pulled the embryo up so you could see it easier in this photo.

Gv played with the rest of the beans for quite a while afterwards. She drew a circle to sort the coats from the seeds, then used a knife to further cut them up and check them out.

And finally, we played with bubbles...

...because bubbles are always fun:

"Where'd the bubble go?"

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 34