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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
Cross a Bridge was always a favorite in my classroom. It's all about different types of bridges and even gives examples of where you can find some of them.
Look at That Building! is by the same author as Follow That Map! and it's just as fun and informative - a great introduction for children.
Iggy Peck, Architect - not only is this a fun rhyming story about a boy who loves to build, but it showcases over a dozen of the most famous structures ever built. (I loved this book so much, I may or may not be secretly reading it myself while Gv naps!)
The Three Little Pigs: An Architectural Tale - I thought this book was simply genius and it's the one Gv wanted me to read the most out of our stack. It's the traditional tale - with an enhanced ending - but what I loved most about it was how each page was filled with clever architectural details (famous buildings, furniture, etc).
Building on Nature
is a mini biography on Antoni Gaudí that highlights his most important works. Gv enjoyed seeing that I had photos I'd taken of pretty much all of the buildings this book introduced her to. 
A Guide to the World's Greatest Buildings
How a House is Built
The World's Most Amazing Skyscrapers
If I Built a House
Frank Lloyd Wright for Kids
Twenty-One Elephants and Still Standing
Shapes in Buildings
Building Big
Amazing Buildings
13 Architects Children Should Know
Amazing Buildings
Buildings at Work - Skyscrapers
The Three Little Pigs
Sing Some Songs
There were a few great tunes that I stumbled across this week:
Across the Bridge (2 versions) from this album was appropriate.
Building Bridges from this Hap Palmer album was great, too.
Strollin' Down the Road by the artist I talked about in this post was another addition to our civil engineering focus.
We spent the majority of our week just building things.
First, we made houses for the three little pigs:
Then we spent some time building with all sorts of different materials:
In addition to the books we read this week, we looked at this site and these cards to see some famous world structures.
We did this fun paper tower test. It was so easy and I can already tell that it will be one Gv requests a lot in the days to come!
We used the same set of books for each test. The cylinder held 8, the rectangular prism held 6 books and the triangular prism held only 2.
Then we did this awesome bridge test with some blocks, two sheets of cardstock, and some glass stones.
This will definitely be an activity to repeat with Gv when she gets older. She's still a bit young to come up with new bridge designs on her own, but she really enjoyed her job of carefully placing the stones on the bridge!
We cross quite a few bridges when we head to the mountains each summer, so I'm anxious to point out the different designs to Gv now that we've done this test!
Finally, we did this activity to illustrate how foundations work. We obviously don't ever have any snow around here and I didn't feel like digging up half our yard for the dirt, so we just used rice:
Across the Bridge (2 versions) from this album was appropriate.
Building Bridges from this Hap Palmer album was great, too.
Strollin' Down the Road by the artist I talked about in this post was another addition to our civil engineering focus.
Watch Some Videos
Play and Create
We spent the majority of our week just building things.
First, we made houses for the three little pigs:
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| Straw |
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| Sticks |
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| Bricks |
Then we spent some time building with all sorts of different materials:
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| Craft sticks and clothespins |
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| Corks |
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| Cups and craft sticks |
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| Mega Blocks (and regular blocks, but I guess in addition to taking a bazillion fuzzy photos this week, I also forgot some!) |
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| Empty toilet paper tubes and random ribbon spools |
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| Straws and Play Doh |
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| Toothpicks and cranberries (this one was far messier than I'd anticipated - be prepared for stains!) |
In addition to the books we read this week, we looked at this site and these cards to see some famous world structures.
We did this fun paper tower test. It was so easy and I can already tell that it will be one Gv requests a lot in the days to come!
We used the same set of books for each test. The cylinder held 8, the rectangular prism held 6 books and the triangular prism held only 2.
 |
| The triangular prism has some extra folds because Gv was trying to "fold it myself" and copy what I was doing to fold the rectangular prism. The extra edges might have affected the test's results, but I figured it really didn't matter for us today and decided not to waste another sheet of paper! |
Then we did this awesome bridge test with some blocks, two sheets of cardstock, and some glass stones.
This will definitely be an activity to repeat with Gv when she gets older. She's still a bit young to come up with new bridge designs on her own, but she really enjoyed her job of carefully placing the stones on the bridge!
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| A two-block bridge failed with 3 stones |
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| Doubling the block supports up helped, but only allowed us to add one more stone before failure occurred. |
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| This bridge held all of our stones, although I'd bet that it would fail with just one or two more. There are three groups of block supports, with two blocks side-by-side for each (6 blocks total). |
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| It took three block supports on each side to hold the arch up (that's one strong arch!). I think this might have held more stones if we'd been able to make the supports wider, but as we only had 6 of these red blocks, the stones just slid right off the sides. |
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| This one (2nd sheet of cardstock folded like an accordion) not only held all of our stones, but it was the most stable. |
Finally, we did this activity to illustrate how foundations work. We obviously don't ever have any snow around here and I didn't feel like digging up half our yard for the dirt, so we just used rice:
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| After our paper tower test, I thought about trying this with both cylinder blocks and square columns to see if that made any difference, but then the oven dinged and my stomach told me to eat dinner instead. |
It was another fun week!
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.
Also, if you don't want to miss a single minute of great tips like this and all the fun around here, be sure to sign up for free updates and then look forward to having each post delivered straight to your inbox!
Linked up with: Favorite Things, Over the Moon, Share the Wealth Sunday, Dishing it & Digging it, What's for Dinner?, Family Joy Blog Link-Up, Literacy Musings Monday, Practical Mondays, Homeschool Nook Link Up, Happiness is Homemade, Merry Monday, Motivation Monday, What'd You Do This Weekend, Meet Up Monday, Totally Terrific Tuesday, Together on Tuesdays, Show Me Yours Linky, Tasty Tuesdays, Little Learning Link Up, Two Uses Tuesday, Hip Homeschool Hop, Lou Lou Girls Fabulous Party Tuesday Talk, Wonderful Wednesday, A Little Bird Told Me, Everything Early Childhood, Creative Muster, Party in Your PJs,What to Read,I Am Pinnable, Christian Bloggers Link Up, This Is How We Roll, Creative Ways, Hearts for Home, Creative Exchange, 100 Happy Days, Try It Like It, No Rules Weekend Blog Party, Tune in Thursdays, Booknificent Thursdays, Thursday Favorite Things, I'm Lovin' It, Inspiration Spotlight, Home Matters, Pretty Pintastic Party, Weekend Potluck, Awesome Life Friday, Creative Collection, The Beautifully Creative Inspired , Bloggers Pit Stop, Weekend Traffic Jam, Pin Me Party, From the Archives, Family Fun Friday, Friday Frivolity, Bloggers Spotlight, Make My Saturday Sweet, Weekend Wind-Down Party,Friday Features Linky, Funtastic Friday , Best of the Weekend, Sweet Inspiration Link Party, Small Victories Sunday, You're Invited, Love to Learn Tuesdays
It was another fun week!
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.
Also, if you don't want to miss a single minute of great tips like this and all the fun around here, be sure to sign up for free updates and then look forward to having each post delivered straight to your inbox!
Linked up with: Favorite Things, Over the Moon, Share the Wealth Sunday, Dishing it & Digging it, What's for Dinner?, Family Joy Blog Link-Up, Literacy Musings Monday, Practical Mondays, Homeschool Nook Link Up, Happiness is Homemade, Merry Monday, Motivation Monday, What'd You Do This Weekend, Meet Up Monday, Totally Terrific Tuesday, Together on Tuesdays, Show Me Yours Linky, Tasty Tuesdays, Little Learning Link Up, Two Uses Tuesday, Hip Homeschool Hop, Lou Lou Girls Fabulous Party Tuesday Talk, Wonderful Wednesday, A Little Bird Told Me, Everything Early Childhood, Creative Muster, Party in Your PJs,What to Read,I Am Pinnable, Christian Bloggers Link Up, This Is How We Roll, Creative Ways, Hearts for Home, Creative Exchange, 100 Happy Days, Try It Like It, No Rules Weekend Blog Party, Tune in Thursdays, Booknificent Thursdays, Thursday Favorite Things, I'm Lovin' It, Inspiration Spotlight, Home Matters, Pretty Pintastic Party, Weekend Potluck, Awesome Life Friday, Creative Collection, The Beautifully Creative Inspired , Bloggers Pit Stop, Weekend Traffic Jam, Pin Me Party, From the Archives, Family Fun Friday, Friday Frivolity, Bloggers Spotlight, Make My Saturday Sweet, Weekend Wind-Down Party,Friday Features Linky, Funtastic Friday , Best of the Weekend, Sweet Inspiration Link Party, Small Victories Sunday, You're Invited, Love to Learn Tuesdays