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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
You won't really ever find me watching skating on tv (I don't care to watch my job for "fun," thankyouverymuch), but there is one time, every four years, when I change my mind.
The Winter Olympics.
We're especially excited to see how the two teams (French pair champions and US Women's Hockey Team) from our rink do in The Games.
So it just makes sense to focus on the topics of motion/force/sports & The Olympics this week, including reading these books:
Wiggle - this little pocket-sized book is great to stick in your purse while you're on the go. It's just a silly, sing-song-verse book about movement that incorporates both real photos and drawings, making it rather unique.
Jump, Frog, Jump! is one of those books you can read over and over in one sitting. Gv loves to say the repetitive phrase ("Jump, Frog, Jump!") as well as hunt for all the hidden animals that will try to get the frog next.
Hooray for Snail! is a silly baseball book about a snail hitting a home run - that goes all the way out to space and back - and still having a difficult time making it back to home base in time. He and the ball reach home at the same instant - will he be out or safe?
To Root, to Toot, to Parachute & Slide and Slurp, Scratch and Burp are some of my favorite books about the not-always-fun topic of grammar. These two titles focus on verbs, which make them perfect for this week of moving
The Adventures of Albert, the Running Bear
Nouns and Verbs Have a Field Day
Dancing with the Indians
Five Little Penguins Slipping on the Ice
Froggy Learns to Swim, Froggy Plays Soccer, and Let's Go, Froggy!
The Winter Olympics.
We're especially excited to see how the two teams (French pair champions and US Women's Hockey Team) from our rink do in The Games.
So it just makes sense to focus on the topics of motion/force/sports & The Olympics this week, including reading these books:
Wiggle - this little pocket-sized book is great to stick in your purse while you're on the go. It's just a silly, sing-song-verse book about movement that incorporates both real photos and drawings, making it rather unique.
Jump, Frog, Jump! is one of those books you can read over and over in one sitting. Gv loves to say the repetitive phrase ("Jump, Frog, Jump!") as well as hunt for all the hidden animals that will try to get the frog next.
Hooray for Snail! is a silly baseball book about a snail hitting a home run - that goes all the way out to space and back - and still having a difficult time making it back to home base in time. He and the ball reach home at the same instant - will he be out or safe?
To Root, to Toot, to Parachute & Slide and Slurp, Scratch and Burp are some of my favorite books about the not-always-fun topic of grammar. These two titles focus on verbs, which make them perfect for this week of moving
Nouns and Verbs Have a Field Day
Dancing with the Indians
Five Little Penguins Slipping on the Ice
Froggy Learns to Swim, Froggy Plays Soccer, and Let's Go, Froggy!
Sing Some Songs
We mainly listened to these selections this week:
Verb: That's What's Happening from this
A Victim of Gravity from this
This entire CD, along with pretty my any others by these two musical guys
I have to say, we pretty much used up all of our watching time with whatever we found on this link, as well as others on the site for some of the other sports we felt like checking out. However, we did watch this video with Elmo on force and motion (choose the car on the ramp), the several cute PBS videos here on simple machines and all the fun activities that the BBC has to offer here, as well.
We did several things to correspond to our topic this week:
I didn't purchase this poster, but I did pull it up on the computer screen so Gv and I could do all the yoga poses one day.
I created this A-Z Actions poster and we'd wear ourselves out each day doing the "workout."
You can download your own copy for free here.
This site and this one were two of my favorites to use with the kids in my classroom when we talked about force and motion and Gv and I had fun exploring them, as well.
We did lots and lots of dancing:
Played ball:
Talked about a simple machine that makes up part of this toy (the inclined plane on the C-Clamp):
And demonstrated pushing and pulling with our wagon:
We talked a bit about gravity (very simply), then gathered a bunch of different objects to drop from up on a chair to observe how they fell.
We turned a scrap piece of wood into a ramp and sent several different toy vehicles rushing down its incline to see which would win the race.
We made a simple lever with a large craft stick and a cylinder from a set of wooden blocks, then catapulted a pom pom with the fulcrum located in different positions.
Verb: That's What's Happening from this
A Victim of Gravity from this
This entire CD, along with pretty my any others by these two musical guys
Watch Some Videos
Play and Create
We did several things to correspond to our topic this week:
I didn't purchase this poster, but I did pull it up on the computer screen so Gv and I could do all the yoga poses one day.
I created this A-Z Actions poster and we'd wear ourselves out each day doing the "workout."
You can download your own copy for free here.
This site and this one were two of my favorites to use with the kids in my classroom when we talked about force and motion and Gv and I had fun exploring them, as well.
We did lots and lots of dancing:
Talked about a simple machine that makes up part of this toy (the inclined plane on the C-Clamp):
And demonstrated pushing and pulling with our wagon:
We talked a bit about gravity (very simply), then gathered a bunch of different objects to drop from up on a chair to observe how they fell.
 |
| I let Gv gather whatever she wanted, but directed her to get something "big," "small," "heavy" and "light." It was interesting to see what she chose, knowing that appearances can often be deceiving. |
 |
| She couldn't always let go of things at exactly the same time, but she had fun and it got the basic idea across. |
We turned a scrap piece of wood into a ramp and sent several different toy vehicles rushing down its incline to see which would win the race.
 |
| "The wheels on the bus go round and round, all down the ramp" |
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| A wooden truck |
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| Racing the wooden truck against a Matchbox car - we each had one to release and counted "1, 2, 3, Let Go!" |
We made a simple lever with a large craft stick and a cylinder from a set of wooden blocks, then catapulted a pom pom with the fulcrum located in different positions.
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| We also tried to catapult a toy coin and then balance two finger puppets like a see-saw |
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!
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!
