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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 some great children's books out there that go along with the polar lands and animals theme! Here are some of our favorites:
Dear Mr. Walrus is an exciting pop-up book which highlights several 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.
Dear Mr. Walrus is an exciting pop-up book which highlights several 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.
Polar Bears
We also had fun reading through Mr. Popper's Penguins this week before watching the movie!
We also had fun reading through Mr. Popper's Penguins this week before watching the movie!
Sing Some Songs
We listened to two main things this week:
You can't think chilly without thinking of all the great music from this album!
Just Like the Penguins Do from the album I shared here was fun for the week, too!
We did several things to correspond to our topic this week:
You can't think chilly without thinking of all the great music from this album!
Just Like the Penguins Do from the album I shared here was fun for the week, too!
Watch Some Videos
We were so excited to watch this movie after reading through the book. We both enjoyed the movie, but definitely thought the book was better.
I haven't seen any of these movies before, but Gv watched one at the ice rink last weekend (how convenient was that?) and she said it was "really funny."
Kids and adults alike love this educational movie, which fits right in to the theme.
None of us have seen these two movies, but I remember kids in my classroom saying they were fun.
Gv loves the tv show Wild Kratts, so the first episode of this season was a great choice to watch.
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.
Play and Create
We did several things to correspond to our topic this week:
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!
Even though it didn't have to do with polar lands or animals, this fun activity related to chilly weather. Plus, it helped get us hyped up for the Olympics (not that we really need any hyping, since we're so excited to watch our rink's top pair team hopefully medal in South Korea this year!)
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 Bible story things we'd created this week, 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.
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!
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:
Even though it didn't have to do with polar lands or animals, this fun activity related to chilly weather. Plus, it helped get us hyped up for the Olympics (not that we really need any hyping, since we're so excited to watch our rink's top pair team hopefully medal in South Korea this year!)
Finally, we did a little blubber demonstration:
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 Bible story things we'd created this week, so I decided to skip them all.
It's great to follow the lead of your child, whenever you can.
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 Bible story things we'd created this week, 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.
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!
