Welcome back to another installment of Latticed Learning! Today I'll be sharing the twenty-third 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's childhood (pages 296-302 in this Bible and 201-207 in this one)Memory Verse
John 15:13 - This is the third 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 local dollar store at the end of the week).
Until then, you can find the first set here.
Saint
Wenceslas (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
W (Print out your free "W" phonics card here!)Topic to Explore
Earth ScienceShape
Rhombus (I'm kind of going in order of vertices/sides and each one will last for several weeks.)Number
2 (Starting back over to focus on writing the numbers, since our first go-round took care of counting and recognizing them all 1-20. 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
Geography From A to Z - We really enjoyed this one and its focus on landforms. It went along perfectly with several of our activities this week, which I loved.
Planet Earth - A typically fabulous Usborne book that provides just the right amount of information for little learners along with rich illustrations.
The River Grows - this was a reading book from my classroom, but it gives just the right amount of facts while following a river's path from melting snow to the ocean.
Volcanoes (& others in Vocabulary Science Pack) - I thought this one might be a bit over Gv's head at this point, but she was riveted the entire time I read it to her.
Volcanoes - another informative book; kind of a fact overload, but the great photos kept Gv's interest.
Other Great Books We Read
Everything Volcanoes and EarthquakesEverything Rocks & Minerals
The Magic School Bus Inside the Earth
Rocks: Hard, Soft, Smooth & Rough
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:
Greater Love from this album helped Gv learn our memory verse
To Be a Fossil and Little Black Rock from this album were great additions to the week.
Down in the Valley from the CD I shared here was fun.
We loved the versions of She'll Be Coming 'Round the Mountain from this album and this one.
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.
To Be a Fossil and Little Black Rock from this album were great additions to the week.
Down in the Valley from the CD I shared here was fun.
We loved the versions of She'll Be Coming 'Round the Mountain from this album and this one.
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 again since it talked about the Wise Men, which we read about this week.Gv did "W" things on this site.
We watched this clip and a few of the others for the letter "W."
We watched several videos on landforms, like this one, this one, and this one.
And we watched this episode and this one of our beloved Magic School Bus (this DVD includes every episode made!).
How We Played
We did a couple things to learn more about Jesus as a boy:I hid the baby Jesus from this and had Gv go find him like Joseph and Mary had to do when Jesus stayed behind at the Temple in Jerusalem.
We then spent some time talking about what to do if she ever felt lost - like reviewed her full name and our names, and started to talk about our phone number and address.
We used our preparations for a weekend birthday party to talk about how the Wise Men brought Jesus gifts to celebrate his being born, too.
We also did several things (besides reading books) to correspond to our Earth Science topic:
We built structures on two cookie sheets. On one, we used plain wooden blocks, on the other, we used these. Then we shook the cookies sheets to simulate an earthquake and see which structure withstood the shaking better.
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| Pre-earthquake structures |
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| Didn't take much for those walls to come tumbling down! |
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| Couldn't budge these! (And man, is that ever some wicked post-nap hair!) |
We did a few activities with food:
I made a new batch of these yummy graham crackers and we followed the directions from this site to talk about fault lines and earthquakes.
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| Our results were sooo different from the other site. I'm sure it's because my crackers are thicker. But it actually worked out just fine, because this ended up looking just like the streets in one of our books on earthquakes! |
We used this delicious bread to create different landform types, like shown here.
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| Not as clear to see as the example I linked to, but Gv did it herself. There's an island & lake with the bread, a strait between two pieces of cheese, and the rest of the cheese is an archipelago |
And then we ate hard boiled eggs, comparing them to some of our books to see how the yolk, white, and shell resembles the Earth's crust.
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| Hmmm...maybe I should have cleaned the playdough out from under her nails before we did this one... |
We made this exciting ice volcano.
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| We were so excited to do this, I forgot to take a photo of how I made it. I got a funnel, covered the point in plastic wrap, then stuck a little rubber bouncy ball down in the bottom of the funnel bowl. Next, I poured in a little baking soda, then added a tiny bit of water to make a paste. I pushed it all down really well so that the ball wouldn't move. I added more baking soda, more water, then some red food coloring and stirred it up a bit. I covered the top of the funnel with more plastic wrap and stuck it in the freezer. When I took it out, I slammed it down over a cookie sheet until it plopped out. I poured on just a tiny bit of vinegar to loosen the ball so I could take it out. |
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| Gv poured some vinegar into the center of the volcano |
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| She was so surprised to see it erupt! |
I printed this cute mini-poster for us to hang up and look at all week.
I printed the landform cards and photos out from this site (I shrunk them down, to save ink). Gv cut out a set of each, matched up the photos to the drawings, then glued them down onto a sheet of construction paper.
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| I tried to save ink by printing out the illustrations in black & white and then coloring them, but it was kind of a fail. Go ahead and print them in color, when you do it! |
We also did the landforms-in-dirt activity on that same site.
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| We did them all, but this is a gulf |
We followed the lead of this site and made the layers of the Earth out of playdough.
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| A little squashed, but it served its purpose |
And we made ourselves some pet rocks:
(we used colored pencils, googly eyes & a pom pom for the nose)
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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