Latticed Learning: Week 9

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Welcome back to another installment of Latticed Learning!  Today I'll be sharing the ninth 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 Exodus (pages 98-119 in this Bible and 81-85 in this one)

Memory Verse

Acts 16:31 - This is the ninth 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 

Ignatius (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

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

Topic to Explore

Polar Lands and Animals 

Shape

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

Number

8 (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

Dear Mr. Walrus is an exciting pop-up book which highlights several other polar animals.



Tacky the Penguin is always good for a laugh - he just cracks me up and I have an awful lot of fun reading this - especially the part where he sings.

 

Arctic Fives Arrive isn't your typical counting book - this one counts by fives!  It's fun to see all the animals arrive and the Ooohs and Ahhhs over the beautiful scene that awaits them at the end.



The Snow Bear has such sweet illustrations and covers a variety of polar animals, but I think what we like the most is how each page is textured.



Penguins to the Rescue is another silly penguin book.  I love the rhyming verse, but my favorite part is searching out the penguin with the rainbow scarf on each page.  I've got a little thing for rainbows, you know.


Other Great Books We Read






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:

Believe in the Lord from this album helped Gv learn our memory verse

Figure Eight from this

This entire soundtrack, which couldn't have been more perfect for this week

Just Like the Penguins Do from the album I shared here was a great choice, too

And so many more, but I'll let you search through your own music collection to see what types songs you can add to a playlist.

Videos We Explored


This video we watched last week continued to line up with our Bible lesson.

We did "I" things on this site.

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

This video fit perfectly for the number 8

We watched this movie, because, how could we not?

We also found a couple of random YouTube clips on polar animals.  I don't really have any specific ones to recommend, but I do always tend to favor anything produced by the BBC.

How We Played

We did lots of activities to continue learning about Moses and the Exodus.

First, we focused on the burning bush:



This is super-simple to make.  Just take a paper lunch sack and cut strips all but a fourth of the way down.  I think I cut about 8.  Add a few rocks or something to the bottom of the bag to weigh it down.  Next, you twist the strips into branches.  Grab some red and orange tissue paper and twist that onto each branch. 

Gv liked this bush best, grabbing it to show off each time we read the Bible story or watched the video.

Then, she made this one:



Gv wanted to do another activity for the burning bush, so I traced her hand and arm onto green construction paper, cut it out, and then cut a few strips of red and orange paper so she could snip some squares out on her own.  She glued it all down and apparently felt the need to go cut a chunk of white paper to add at the bottom for a little flair.



This bush looks really boring to me, but she definitely enjoyed poking all the twigs into the playdough.  As long as she had fun, I'm happy.

Next, we moved on to the plagues.  We had a great time with these activities and you can read all about them here.


One of the activities we did for our study of the plagues - a 10 Plagues Box

Once the Israelites had escaped from Pharoah, we had to re-enact their journey through the sea:



I took the seats from this table and chairs set, placed them back-to-back, draped a blue sheet over the tops, then pulled the chairs apart enough so that she could pass between them.

This activity went on and on and on - first with just Gv walking through and then circling back around to do it all again, then she started dragging other friends through with her:


Minnie's turn to come along!
 She even got the poor dog to join in with her on this journey:


Poor dog never knew what he was in for when he joined this household!
Finally, the Israelites were on their way, so we made God's pillars out of craft sticks, vitamin-bottle cotton, and tissue paper:


Just glue on red & orange tissue paper for the fire by night and cotton for the cloud by day
Of course, then Gv had to lead her friends around using these pillars:




We also did a few things (besides reading books) to correspond to our polar lands and animals topic:

Gv was asking for things to cut out and trace one day, so I hunted down these cute sheets to print out for her:  tracing the shapes around the penguins on page 30 of this tot pack and the cute animals on page 2 of this.

We passed a pair of rolled-up socks back and forth on the tops of our feet, just like penguins do with their eggs:



I put some pillows down on the floor and Gv hopped from "iceberg" to "iceberg"



We don't have any carpet in our house, but if you do, that's where you'll want to try this activity - the pillows were slipping and sliding so much, we had to change the hopping into careful stepping, instead!

I'd frozen water in a couple of old-style ice trays so she could build with them as blocks:


I highly suggest placing a shower curtain liner underneath everything for this activity - and be prepared for all clothes to get wet!



These actually stacked better than I expected!
Finally, we did a little blubber demonstration:


The dog wanted his nose to be warm, too

I threw those same ice cubes into a container and filled it (not to the top, though) with water.  Then, I filled two sandwich bags full of palm shortening and sealed them.  I put those into another sandwich bag, but left it open.  Gv was able to stick her hand in this opening, in between the two bags of shortening.  We talked about how the fat was like the blubber that some polar animals have - and how it was keeping her hand much warmer than the icy water outside of it.  

I'd also had some cute polar animal crafts planned out, but Gv just kept wanting to repeat/play with all the Exodus things we'd created, so I decided to skip them all.

It's great to follow the lead of your child, whenever you can.

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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