Syncopated Mama: Latticed Learning - Careers/Community Helpers

Learn while playing with Latticed Learning! This week's theme has plenty of activities to go along with it - keep reading to find out more!

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Welcome back to Latticed Learning! This year, we're continuing to learn while we play - repeating many of our favorites from the past while adding in all sorts of new activities as well.

This day's post is devoted to our weekly themes - some weeks have more activities than others, but each lesson will be fun for you to explore with your little one!

Read All About It

Little People Busy Town - these great flap board books have long been some of Gv's favorites and although they've been put aside for others lately, it was fun to get back out again for this week's theme.

Caps for Sale - one of my favorite books as a child, these crazy monkeys give this peddler a run for his money!

Who Drives This? - another well-loved board book that Gv enjoyed reacquainting herself with this week.

Doctor Ted - these books are always fun and this one never fails to inspire Gv to drag out her doctor's kit to "check us out."

Sherman Crunchley - not only a fun book to read while learning about different careers/community helpers, but a great lesson stressing the importance of finding something you enjoy and making that your job.

Firedog Martha

Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus

Young Clara Barton

Mr. Buzz the Beeman

Olivia Becomes a Vet

What Can We Play Today

Sing Some Songs

Let's Bake Cookies from one of our favorite albums (that I talk about more here) was really the only song we got into this week, other than singing Pat-a-Cake, Pat-a-Cake, the Baker's Man plenty of times...

Watch Some Videos

We didn't watch a whole lot this week, but here are two great suggestions:

This site had plenty of fire safety videos to fill our time.

This movie about a chef is always fun.

Play and Create

I printed out these sorting mats (I shrunk them to save ink & paper) and Gv cut and glued the tools in the appropriate spots.

I just loved how she put the hats on the workers, and the things in the baker's hands!

I printed out page 13 of this Kindergarten fireman pack to give Gv another opportunity to try a maze (she still needed my help, but enjoyed it).

As you can see, she still likes to cut everything!

We pretended to be policemen and did a fingerprint counting activity:

I just folded a paper to make boxes, stuck a number in each one, and let her use a stamp pad to add the appropriate number of fingerprints. I'd debated between making 12 and 8 squares, but figured her attention span wouldn't last for more than 8.

I was right. In fact, 6 probably would have been best.

Even though we have a "real" fire hat we'd gotten from the local fire department,

we followed this guide to make a fire hat from a paper plate.

Why yes, that is the weekly Harbor Freight ad taped up for display on the fireplace. Along with a pair of scissors, which she's blocking. Everything's fair game for this girl, when she gets her hands on the tape dispenser!

I traced the paper plate outline onto red construction paper which Gv then cut and glued onto the plate. I cut out the shield, wrote "FD" on it with black crayon, and she glued it on.

I cut around the inner circle of the plate like the other site showed, but had to go back and cut more to make it big enough to fit her head.

Gv "checked me out" plenty of times with her beloved doctor's kit:

She wore her trusty Steak 'N Shake hat to cook up plenty of yummy treats in her kitchen:

I fell in love with the ideas shared here on setting up a play airport, but decided against it right now. (Which really means, of course, that I was totally too lazy to mess with it all right now)

It might be best to do as a joint project (share the work!) with our homeschool/play group or else just worry about doing it to prepare Gv for her first flight someday.

Really cute stuff, though.

We played hairdresser, using this fun idea:

It was at this point that Gv said we needed green hair to do this (my hairdresser had green hair at my last haircut)

Not quite Vidal Sassoon or Paul Mitchell quality, but it was fun.

Finally, we made this cute little baker, following the photo I found here:

Take a piece of construction paper for the base, then glue on a quarter-folded coffee filter at the top, covered by a band of white. Add a face (with googly eyes, of course), some arm strips hugging a small paper plate, and then some cookies.