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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
There are so many fun children's books out there about planes, trains and automobiles! Here are some great ones we read this week:
Katy and the Big Snow (along with Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel) were two of my favorite books as a child. Gv really enjoyed examining all the details in the frames of so many of the pages. Plus, we even found a fun science activity to go along with it!
We have (and read) about five different copies of The Little Engine That Could, but it's such a classic, it never gets old!
My Truck is Stuck - this book was a load of fun (we loved watching the bones diminish as we turned the pages) and its repetition meant that Gv was able to "read" it all by herself after just once with me! (Hooray - a book I don't have to read fifty bazillion times, because she can just deal with it independently!)
I Stink! - although I don't particularly care for this one myself, Gv loves it and spent time every day flipping through it and begging me to "read it again!" I just don't like the flow of the text, although I will concede that it's pretty engaging for little ears to listen to.
I think the real reason she loved it so much is because the three of us were especially gassy this week {grin} due to an overabundance of eggplant from our produce stand...
Scuffy the Tugboat - the ancient copy that was mine as a child was just as great now as it was then!
Richard Scarry's Cars and Trucks and Things That Go
Fire Engines
Flashing Fire Engines
All Aboard! A True Train Story (especially cool because I rode this actual train during one of my summers training in CO)
Roaring Rockets
Airplane Flight!
Mighty Movers - Diggers & Dumpers & Emergency!
Richard Scarry's Cars and Trucks from A to Z
Sheep in a Jeep
Little Blue Truck
We have (and read) about five different copies of The Little Engine That Could, but it's such a classic, it never gets old!
My Truck is Stuck - this book was a load of fun (we loved watching the bones diminish as we turned the pages) and its repetition meant that Gv was able to "read" it all by herself after just once with me! (Hooray - a book I don't have to read fifty bazillion times, because she can just deal with it independently!)
I Stink! - although I don't particularly care for this one myself, Gv loves it and spent time every day flipping through it and begging me to "read it again!" I just don't like the flow of the text, although I will concede that it's pretty engaging for little ears to listen to.
I think the real reason she loved it so much is because the three of us were especially gassy this week {grin} due to an overabundance of eggplant from our produce stand...
Scuffy the Tugboat - the ancient copy that was mine as a child was just as great now as it was then!
Richard Scarry's Cars and Trucks and Things That Go
Fire Engines
Flashing Fire Engines
All Aboard! A True Train Story (especially cool because I rode this actual train during one of my summers training in CO)
Roaring Rockets
Airplane Flight!
Mighty Movers - Diggers & Dumpers & Emergency!
Richard Scarry's Cars and Trucks from A to Z
Sheep in a Jeep
Little Blue Truck
Sing Some Songs
I found some pretty fun transportation tunes this week:
Catch That Train and Meeting in the Station from the album I shared here
The Airplane Song from this great album had Gv taking flight in a corner of the kitchen each time it came on
Track 2 on this album gets awfully old (to me & G, not Gv), but I do like how active she is when she sings it
We're spending all our media time watching Christmas movies at the moment, but this movie (& this one, too) match up with this week's theme wonderfully.
This was a fun video that let you guess what vehicle was making the sound, then showed you the answer.
We did several things to correspond to our transportation topic this week:
First, we brought out every vehicle Gv owned and played with those:
Then we made these fun little fingerprint vehicles. Even though I had to draw in all the details, Gv really got into sticking her finger on the stamp pads and then leaving fingerprints all over the paper. She hung it up on her usual spot above the fireplace and spent time examining it all week long:
I printed out the black & white helicopter dice game from this site and then we made up our own game rules to go with it. Basically, we just each took a different marker color and then took turns coloring in a square, depending on what our die roll turned out to be. If we rolled a number that didn't have a square left to color, the other person just got to take another turn.
I wasn't sure how well this would play out with Gv, but she caught on to the counting-dots thing right away and was completely able to play it without my help. The only thing that tripped her up was not being able to find the number "4" when she rolled it, since the fours were written differently than she'd been used to. No problem, I just wrote them both ways and explained that the number could be written either way, just like the lowercase letter "A," which we've talked about in the past. So, bonus lesson within the planned one!
I came across this fun science activity that went along with the book that we were already reading. It was pretty low-stress for something science-y and Gv ended up playing with it all for quite a while after we'd checked things out together.
I loved this idea, so drew a little car and track with permanent marker and let Gv have a go. She definitely had fun with it, but not so much that I'd create some of the other match-up ideas Lalymom had that were similar.
I printed page 5 of this pack and then Gv cut and glued everything to sort it all out.
I printed out pages 5 and 17 of this pack. For page 5, Gv cut out all the modes of transportation, then glued them on the appropriate piece of construction paper (Sky, Land & Water - although I wish I'd made that one "Sea"):
We played the game for page 17. I just held my pen point over a paper clip in the center of the spinner and then we'd take turns coloring in the squares on the graph. At the end, she counted up the totals and I wrote them in:
We taped markers to the backs of three die cast cars so Gv could create her own version of this:
And finally, I reduced (to save paper) and printed out these coloring pages, just so Gv could flip through all the various vehicles. She still wasn't in the mood to do much coloring this week, but totally enjoyed cutting them all out.
Catch That Train and Meeting in the Station from the album I shared here
The Airplane Song from this great album had Gv taking flight in a corner of the kitchen each time it came on
Track 2 on this album gets awfully old (to me & G, not Gv), but I do like how active she is when she sings it
Watch Some Videos
This was a fun video that let you guess what vehicle was making the sound, then showed you the answer.
Play and Create
We did several things to correspond to our transportation topic this week:
First, we brought out every vehicle Gv owned and played with those:
 |
| Our neighborhood road map from week 17 came in quite handy for all this vehicular play! |
Then we made these fun little fingerprint vehicles. Even though I had to draw in all the details, Gv really got into sticking her finger on the stamp pads and then leaving fingerprints all over the paper. She hung it up on her usual spot above the fireplace and spent time examining it all week long:
I printed out the black & white helicopter dice game from this site and then we made up our own game rules to go with it. Basically, we just each took a different marker color and then took turns coloring in a square, depending on what our die roll turned out to be. If we rolled a number that didn't have a square left to color, the other person just got to take another turn.
I wasn't sure how well this would play out with Gv, but she caught on to the counting-dots thing right away and was completely able to play it without my help. The only thing that tripped her up was not being able to find the number "4" when she rolled it, since the fours were written differently than she'd been used to. No problem, I just wrote them both ways and explained that the number could be written either way, just like the lowercase letter "A," which we've talked about in the past. So, bonus lesson within the planned one!
I came across this fun science activity that went along with the book that we were already reading. It was pretty low-stress for something science-y and Gv ended up playing with it all for quite a while after we'd checked things out together.
 |
| Uh, how am I supposed to pick up the ice with this string? |
 |
| Ooohhh, magic! |
I loved this idea, so drew a little car and track with permanent marker and let Gv have a go. She definitely had fun with it, but not so much that I'd create some of the other match-up ideas Lalymom had that were similar.
I printed page 5 of this pack and then Gv cut and glued everything to sort it all out.
I printed out pages 5 and 17 of this pack. For page 5, Gv cut out all the modes of transportation, then glued them on the appropriate piece of construction paper (Sky, Land & Water - although I wish I'd made that one "Sea"):
We played the game for page 17. I just held my pen point over a paper clip in the center of the spinner and then we'd take turns coloring in the squares on the graph. At the end, she counted up the totals and I wrote them in:
 |
| Can you tell at what point Gv got tired of coloring in the squares herself, and just asked me to do it? |
We taped markers to the backs of three die cast cars so Gv could create her own version of this:
 |
| Ready for the Louvre! |
And finally, I reduced (to save paper) and printed out these coloring pages, just so Gv could flip through all the various vehicles. She still wasn't in the mood to do much coloring this week, but totally enjoyed cutting them all out.
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
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