Syncopated Mama: Latticed Learning: Week 6

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

Isaac, Jacob & Esau (pages 52-70 in this Bible and 51-57 in this one)

Memory Verse

Ephesians 6:1 - This is the sixth song on this album, which I've raved about before. I also created this card:

to post on the fridge each week (and then add to a mini photo album from the local dollar store when we take it down) and I'm amazed that Gv can say this first verse - minus the reference - by herself already!

You can download your own copy of this card for free here! Want the whole set right now? Get them here.

Saint

Francis (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

F (Print out your free "F" phonics card here!)

Topic to Explore

Me/My Family/My Friends/My Home

Shape

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

Number

5 (Like I said in this post about the alphabet, we'll talk about all (well, maybe not all) the numbers every week, but I'm choosing one to focus on each week and you'll see some repetition as time goes on with a few of them.)

Best Books We Read This Week

What Mommies Do Best/What Daddies Do Best is two books in one and although the text is the same for both sides, we all love how the mommies and daddies do things differently (and not always in the way you'd expect!)

Night Noises provides a peek into the mind of an elderly woman as she drowsily sits by the fire one night. I love that there is a book out there introducing little ones to the different stages of life and I can see it launching lots of positive conversations in the future.

Froggy's Baby Sister continues all the froggy fun I've spoken about before. This time, a new baby joins the family and Froggy can't wait to help take care of her.

That's Not My Mom! is a fold-out-flap book that is lots of fun to read. Besides the action of the flaps, we make a game out of guessing what type of animal Gerry the giraffe thinks is his mom on each page.

A House Is a House for Me is a clever book that highlights all sorts of different homes - even for things like corn and peas! This book's illustrations are so chock-full of details that it can keep your little one occupied for hours and is one that you'll love returning to again and again.

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:

Children Obey Your Parents from this album helped Gv learn our memory verse

Ready or Not, Here I Come from this

This album fits this week's theme perfectly.

I also think pretty much any song from the albums I highlighted here would work well.

And so many more, but I'll let you search through your own music collection to see what types of school/toys/play-related songs you can add to a playlist.

Videos We Explored

We did "F" things on this site.

We watched this clip and a few of the others for the letter "F."

This video fit perfectly for the number 5.

How We Played

We did a few activities to go along with our Bible readings about Isaac, Jacob & Esau:

I printed out this picture, cut a brown pom pom in half and then let Gv glue the "hair" all over Jacob's arms and back before we colored the page together.

I also created a mini book for this story, but haven't had a chance to get it past the sketch stage yet, so I'll come back and add it when it's all finished. Gv has still enjoyed reading the rough version of it, so I know she'll be happy to get the completed book soon.

We ate lentil stew. I tried a new recipe that was supposed to be close to they type of stew Jacob might have really served Isaac that included lots of barley, but I think next year, I'll just serve this one that we love or some Dal.

We also did a ton of things (besides reading books) to correspond to our me/my family/my friends/my home theme:

We looked through Gv's photo album (similar to this) filled with pictures of family and friends - one of her favorite toys since when she was tiny.

Then we used our handy-dandy dollar store photo albums to create a family & friends book that not only includes photos of each person, but fun facts, as well (which especially helps your child get to know those special people who live out of town). To do this, ask your loved ones to send you a list of some of their favorite things, or have them create their own page (this would particularly be fun if the album is a gift), or just grab photos and information off their Facebook page.

You can't cover this topic without creating a Me Book! This year, ours was simple. I just grabbed a few sheets of construction paper, added an old photo to the cover, and created pages highlighting her favorite things, things she knows (like letters, numbers, shapes and colors), tracings of her hands and feet, and a page for her to create her own drawing. Everything got stapled together and then we set it out so she could look at it whenever she wanted to.

Our color printer wasn't working this week, so I had to use old baby photos that we had lying around for everything

We played with a personalized photo puzzle, using blocks like these. To make one, just stack together enough blocks for your photo to fit on, then cut the photo along the seams. Use tape to keep the photo on the blocks.

See, another baby photo!

We created a life-sized Gv - I just taped together several sheets of copy paper and then had Gv lay down on her back while I traced around her body. We "dressed" this paper version of her up with markers:

Hopefully you do a better job on your face and it doesn't turn out as creepy as this one!

Gv loves to create her own little person on this website, so I made sure she had the chance to do it again this week.

We created a family tree - first taking a trip out to the backyard to hunt for the perfect stick, then nabbing a tracing of Grammy & Papa's hands during their recent visit, then tracing all the handprints in our house, and finally making leaves for the out-of-town uncles. I punched a hole in each one and then used large paper clips to hang them on the branch. To prop the stick up, I just filled a vase with beans and jammed it in.

We found the perfect stick - top level for the grandparents, then we're on the middle level (with the uncles on a separate branch), and Gv on the bottom

We took a tour of our house (naming things like sinks, the oven, furniture, etc.), then built this home for her farmer out of blocks:

I had also planned on building houses with graham crackers and nut butter, but ended up being too lazy to make either the crackers or the butter this week. But if we hadn't been out of both, I know this activity would have been fun.

We also did a bunch of name activities, like:

Matching the letters in her name using clothespins:

I drew a little elephant onto card stock, wrote her name across the top edge, then gave her clothespins with the letters written on them. Not only will this help her learn to spell her name, but it's great for her fine motor skills, as well!

We played with her puzzle sticks:

We used a set similar to these to build her name - see how to make them here

She has a set of these for her name, too. Read the post here.

I printed out these alphabet letters, which we colored and cut out. Gv can put the letters in the correct order to spell her name.

I also printed this sheet full of mixed-up letters (scroll down to find it). The idea is to find and color the letters in your name:

Gv has had a set of magnet letters spelling out her name on the front of the washing machine for some time now. I placed them there initially to help her just recognize her name and to play around with, but now she's working on arranging the letters in the correct order. To help her with this, I got out some simple letter cards so she could match up the correct magnet letters to the appropriate cards (this would be a great way to practice spelling words, too):

Not everyone has some of these great pattern blocks, but since I have several sets from my days in the classroom, I printed out these alphabet cards and we built her name using them:

I found a random piece of poster board, so I created a simple name puzzle for her out of that:

You'll notice that I've made a set of almost all these name activities for my name, as well. That's so I can sit there and work on something while she's putting her name together. I figure that allows me to model the activity for her, without explicitly telling her what to do. So far, it's worked pretty well, especially for this puzzle, since I used different cuts between each letter.

I wrote her name on a sheet of paper and then let her cover each letter with stickers:

Tiny stickers work best for this activity

And finally, I wrote a large "G" on a sheet of paper, told her to trace it with wet glue, then she ripped up pieces of tissue paper to cover it all with. I'd suggest sticking with just the initial letter for this one, because it takes for-ev-er to rip and stick all those little scraps on!

Whew! What a fun week we had!

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 6