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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
The Adventures of Albert, the Running Bear is a cute story about a bear who begins life in a circus before being transferred to a zoo. He starts performing his circus act in his cage when he discovers the crowd will throw him all sorts of yummy junk food in appreciation. When the zookeeper puts him on a restrictive diet, he busts out to find himself running a marathon through Central Park...
Good Night, Gorilla is one of our favorite books. I've always loved how it tells its story with such few words and there are plenty of little details to notice on each page.
Let's Go to the Zoo is a fabulous flap book that Gv has enjoyed pretty much since birth. It's fun to see her at a new stage of interaction with it now.
Zany Zoo is a collection of silly poems that shines the spotlight on all sorts of different animals.
When We Went to the Zoo begins with a cool map of the zoo to explore and then goes on to tell a story about one family's trip to their local zoological park. I love what turns out to be their favorite part of the excursion and think it's so neat what the kids do to the map at the end of the book.
Sing Some Songs
We mainly listened to these selections this week:
This CD has become one of our favorites and was just perfect.
The Four-Legged Zoo off the math album I talk about here matches this week, as well.
Going to the Zoo off of this album is great, too.
We mainly just spent time on two zoo websites - San Diego Zoo and The National Zoo - poking around. The most exciting thing we saw?
Both pandas actively pooping on the webcams!
What are the odds, we saw them both poop, live!
We did several things to correspond to our topic this week:
I printed out this set and this set of animal movement cards to stick in our dice and play with all week.
I also printed this cute book on directions for Gv to complete (with some help), since she seemed to be in a bit more of a coloring mood this week.
Gv loves giraffes and loves when we trace her hands and make something out of it, so this craft was loads of fun:
I just traced her arm from the elbow down on yellow construction paper, then she cut out orange spots and glued on those and some googly eyes, then I drew on the nose and mouth.
We spent some time recreating the yoga poses on this website.
Gv measured the length of animals in her books with some math manipulatives I'd had in my classroom:
We made a zoo cage for her stuffed animals:
Gv decorated a sheet of black construction paper with all sorts of googly eyes to match one of our favorite pages from Good Night, Gorilla.
I printed out a few pages from these adorable printables, mainly just to see where Gv was at with some of these concepts.
She shocked me by completing this beginning letter sounds sheet all by herself:
I knew she'd enjoy counting up these animals and finding the corresponding number:
There was one on a simple pattern sequence:
I also printed out a sheet on syllables, just to use as an introduction, but tossed it out after realizing that it was way too advanced for her right now.
Her favorite activity was the zoo animal cube, which we took turns tossing in a game and colored in the matching graph to see which animal would win.
Gv did this animal sorting activity:
I just printed the sheet out, then she cut, sorted, and glued it all down onto some construction paper.
And finally, we investigated some of the websites listed here to take a virtual trip to the zoo and then did this scavenger hunt to find different animals.
This CD has become one of our favorites and was just perfect.
The Four-Legged Zoo off the math album I talk about here matches this week, as well.
Going to the Zoo off of this album is great, too.
Watch Some Videos
Both pandas actively pooping on the webcams!
What are the odds, we saw them both poop, live!
Play and Create
We did several things to correspond to our topic this week:
I printed out this set and this set of animal movement cards to stick in our dice and play with all week.
 |
| Slithering like a snake |
I also printed this cute book on directions for Gv to complete (with some help), since she seemed to be in a bit more of a coloring mood this week.
Gv loves giraffes and loves when we trace her hands and make something out of it, so this craft was loads of fun:
 |
| I loved how she made one a girl by adding spots as a bow! |
I just traced her arm from the elbow down on yellow construction paper, then she cut out orange spots and glued on those and some googly eyes, then I drew on the nose and mouth.
We spent some time recreating the yoga poses on this website.
Gv measured the length of animals in her books with some math manipulatives I'd had in my classroom:
We made a zoo cage for her stuffed animals:
 |
| Just take a clothes basket and weave yarn through the holes to make bars, then fill it with critters. |
Gv decorated a sheet of black construction paper with all sorts of googly eyes to match one of our favorite pages from Good Night, Gorilla.
 |
| Gv insisted that we find "Mommy & Daddy" and "Baby" eyes to match up for each set |
I printed out a few pages from these adorable printables, mainly just to see where Gv was at with some of these concepts.
She shocked me by completing this beginning letter sounds sheet all by herself:
I knew she'd enjoy counting up these animals and finding the corresponding number:
There was one on a simple pattern sequence:
I also printed out a sheet on syllables, just to use as an introduction, but tossed it out after realizing that it was way too advanced for her right now.
Her favorite activity was the zoo animal cube, which we took turns tossing in a game and colored in the matching graph to see which animal would win.
Gv did this animal sorting activity:
I just printed the sheet out, then she cut, sorted, and glued it all down onto some construction paper.
And finally, we investigated some of the websites listed here to take a virtual trip to the zoo and then did this scavenger hunt to find different animals.
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!
