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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
Feathers for Lunch not only teaches about birds, but plants, too. I also like how it shows off the different feathers for each type of bird it highlights.
Have You Seen Birds? not only uses rhyme and excellent word choice to tell all about different types of birds, but the illustrations are really unique, too. Each one is composed from clay, which ends up being a really effective medium for a book like this.
Have You Seen My Duckling? doesn't have a lot of text (which I love, because it really forces you to pay attention to the details in order to figure out the story), but what little it does have is very repetitive. This is great for beginning readers - and Gv just loves searching for the missing duckling on each page!
If you've been a reader around here for a while, you probably remember that we love Boo to a Goose. It's a fun book to read, with silliness and rhymes and repetition so that the little ones can join in with you!
An Egg is Quiet is another book I've mentioned before, because it's just so pretty. Not every egg that's featured here is that of a bird, but most are and it's really interesting to compare the different sizes, shapes and colors of each one
The Birdwatchers
Buzzy the Vegetarian Vulture
Chick Life Cycle
Chick
The Chick and the Duckling
Make Way for Ducklings
The Ugly Duckling
Carolina Wrens
Sing Some Songs
We listened to these selections this week:
We didn't watch too much this week, but we did find two things to explore:
Gv loves Nature Cat, so she had fun watching the Love Ya, Birdies episode.
She also had fun investigating all the birds on this BBC Nature site.
We did several things to correspond to our topic this week:
First, we made the world's easiest bird feeder:
Then Gv made this colorful paper plate bird:
Of course, we had to spend plenty of time flapping our wings like a bird:
I set up a variation of this idea for Gv:
I covered her kiddie pool with an old blanket, then we hunted up some sticks and twigs from the backyard to help build her "nest." I blew up a couple of balloon "eggs" and then she just hung out, doing the kinds of things birds do.
She had a blast snipping feathers out of construction paper:
I pulled out our bag of craft feathers and Gv matched them up to the birds in one of our books for the week:
She also just sorted them by color:
Then I grabbed the colander so she could do this:
And then I got a bag of buttons for her to do this with:
Since the Feed the Old Lady box is still one of Gv's favorite things to play with (I made it for her way back in this week), I came up with this bird we could feed using one of our trusty greens boxes:
We spent some time in the backyard watching for birds.
I liked how age-appropriate this tally sheet was for the activity. I knew we'd never see any birds swimming, so I changed that one to "singing."
We got really lucky and witnessed a crazy bird fight. It was just like being at a hockey game or something.
Gv did this cute bird math activity, although I kind of completely changed it.
I printed out the numbered birds and she cut them out, but instead of clipping the appropriate number of clothespins to each one for the tail feathers, Gv glued on that number of craft feathers.
I really love how these turned out. This activity took a looooong time (in a good way!) and it was neat to see how Gv chose to arrange the feathers on each one.
Here are a few of my favorites:
Finally, since Grammy likes cardinals, we made this for her as a Mother's Day present:
(Grammy, if you're reading this before Mother's Day, pretend to be surprised when you open it!)
This album that I shared in an earlier post was pretty great.
We've played this album for some of our other Latticed Learning weeks and it was perfect to haul out again.
We've played this album for some of our other Latticed Learning weeks and it was perfect to haul out again.
Watch Some Videos
Gv loves Nature Cat, so she had fun watching the Love Ya, Birdies episode.
She also had fun investigating all the birds on this BBC Nature site.
Play and Create
We did several things to correspond to our topic this week:
First, we made the world's easiest bird feeder:
 |
| Spread peanut butter over the outside of an old toilet paper tube, then roll it all in birdseed. Tie it up with some string or yarn and wait for the birds to come! |
Then Gv made this colorful paper plate bird:
 |
| Fold a paper plate in half, squirt one side with glue, and cover it all with squares of colorful tissue paper |
 |
| Glue on a beak and googly eye, add some curled ribbon for tail feathers, and then fold (accordion-style) some paper for a wing (cut a slit in the plate to hold it) |
Of course, we had to spend plenty of time flapping our wings like a bird:
 |
| Lots of flapping going on here. Lots of flapping... |
I set up a variation of this idea for Gv:
I covered her kiddie pool with an old blanket, then we hunted up some sticks and twigs from the backyard to help build her "nest." I blew up a couple of balloon "eggs" and then she just hung out, doing the kinds of things birds do.
She had a blast snipping feathers out of construction paper:
I pulled out our bag of craft feathers and Gv matched them up to the birds in one of our books for the week:
She also just sorted them by color:
Then I grabbed the colander so she could do this:
And then I got a bag of buttons for her to do this with:
 |
| In case you can't tell, she threaded matching-color buttons onto the feathers |
Since the Feed the Old Lady box is still one of Gv's favorite things to play with (I made it for her way back in this week), I came up with this bird we could feed using one of our trusty greens boxes:
 |
| A construction paper head and beak, googly eyes and some craft feathers for flair. Glue it all down and then punch a small hole in the center of the beak... |
 |
| Then cut a pipe cleaner into thirds, bend the piece up a bit, and feed these "worms" to the bird! |
We spent some time in the backyard watching for birds.
I liked how age-appropriate this tally sheet was for the activity. I knew we'd never see any birds swimming, so I changed that one to "singing."
We got really lucky and witnessed a crazy bird fight. It was just like being at a hockey game or something.
Gv did this cute bird math activity, although I kind of completely changed it.
I printed out the numbered birds and she cut them out, but instead of clipping the appropriate number of clothespins to each one for the tail feathers, Gv glued on that number of craft feathers.
I really love how these turned out. This activity took a looooong time (in a good way!) and it was neat to see how Gv chose to arrange the feathers on each one.
Here are a few of my favorites:
Finally, since Grammy likes cardinals, we made this for her as a Mother's Day present:
 |
| What are all those specks? Why, glitter of course! Glitter adds a little pizazz to everything, don't you think? |
(Grammy, if you're reading this before Mother's Day, pretend to be surprised when you open it!)
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!
