Glimmercat Education: bat

Sometimes, you just want to pull out an easy craft to round out that Kindergarten lesson. Or, maybe you read one of my favorite Mo Willem's children books, "Don't Let the Pigeon Ride the Bus"...

And you were wishing you had one craft more to help make those little ones relate that much more with the pigeon. I mean who doesn't wish they could drive a bus once, right?

We love this latest packet of our Letter B crafts and we can always come up with suggestions for how to use them, even if you don't need to teach the Letter B anytime soon!

For instance, let's say it's getting close to Halloween and you need a friendly Bat for kids to create...Voila! we have that for you. Look how cute he is!

Or, it's Spring semester : time to teach about the life cycle of the butterfly, and you'd like to have your kids color in their own butterfly wings on a butterfly craft, but drawing them out sounds a little challenging.

We have you covered!

Since for several years I worked in the public sector as a Children's Librarian, I can't imagine these crafts without a good Children's Book read-aloud to go along with it. So I've also created, a book list of recommended titles that includes some great stories that are perfect for reading out loud to little ones.

Hopefully, some of these books will be new ones to add to your own library. Personally, I think you can never have enough good books.

We try to make sure that all of our crafts are doable by little hands and each one has been kid tested and approved. This more challenging bus craft, shown above, might require a little assistance when it comes to taping it together, but what better way to practice all those excellent hand-eye coordinating skills then letting your students try?

We also make sure that all of our crafts have their black and white counterparts, so you will find a version that can be hand-colored in each of the crafts in our packets.

Perfect for your Reading Literacy activities after a good bear story, our Bear Craft is a simple cut and paste.

And each craft has a spot for writing student names, so that these precious completed projects will make it home in the backpack they were intended for!

Check out more of our Craft Products in our Store!

You can find our printable B Crafts Packet ready to be purchased and downloaded today!

Let's talk about Beautiful B and the "Letter of the Week" Curriculum that we have all put together for you. Here's a preview page showing a glimpse of what we have in the packet:

Each of our Letter of the Week Packets includes a mini book with mini exercises and mini activities for children to practice and do.

It prints out on one sheet of paper, folds up and is just the right size for small hands.

We often begin our Week with introducing the Letter B. I will give small manipulatives to the children and let them fill in their Letter Color Sheet.

This is also the day we sing our Letter B song and talk about the story from the picture where Glimmercat found the baby's bottle:

But let's get into the B things we introduce in each day: First, is butterflies!

For this craft, the kids colored the butterfly first. The insides of the B were tricky to cut out. I found it easiest to let the kids cut out their butterfly along the dotted line and then handle the insides of the B myself.

We shaved up some broken crayons (the kids got to choose their colors), and then they spread them out as they wished between pieces of wax paper. I worked the iron.

They turned out so cute, especially hanging in the window! You may need to help them cut out around the butterfly antennae: those were tricky, too.

Butterflies are so fascinating to small children. If you get the chance, have your kids watch this delightful YouTube video that is a time-lapse videography capturing the building of cocoons by caterpillars, and then the adult painted lady butterflies breaking out of their little shells with fully developed wings.

We love our Memory Game for each letter that comes along! There is lots of practice for cutting here, or you could precut the squares so all that is left to do is play the game!

This little bat craft is easily put together with a big Brown pom pom for the bat body. You could even hang the little bats from the ceiling when you were all done.

On Day 2 and read over the activity and craft we have for Bears.

This is a simple cut-out and paste bear critter, and it would be great to read a storybook that includes bears, after doing this craft. One of my favorites is an oldie, but goodie: "Blueberries for Sal", by Robert McClosky.

This story is so sweet with such fun pictures and besides, it includes such fun "B" words: Bear, and Blueberries. I decided to do a Reading Literacy printable that would work with this story, so we have this fun lesson in the B packet:

Of course, you will need "Blueberries" or something that can pass as blueberries to put into your pail. I suppose, you could just use a blue marker. Yep, that would work. But it wouldn't be nearly so tasty!

We also did (as an extra idea) another edible craft (this would be more for our Homeschool friends):

We began with a slice of bread (I made homemade bread so it would be nice and soft, but any soft bread would probably work). We got out the butterfly cookie cutter and soon had perfect little bread butterflies ready for take-off.

The "paint" is simply milk that has had a few drops of food coloring added. The kids painted their butterflies using Q-tips (my favorite go-to preschool paint brush!).

The kids very carefully painted their butterflies. Then we added a sprinkling of sugar and a few colored sprinkles just to make them extra pretty.

You wouldn't think that milk painted toast with just a bit of sugar could taste that amazing, but to hear those children as they ate their butterflies, you would think I had fed them sweet nectar from heaven!

There are several more B activities in the Letter of the Week packet, along with our regular B curriculum (writing practice sheets, dot to dot, maze, etc.). For more information, check it out here:

Letter of the Week for Y

Letter of the Week for Z

Pages

Butterflies, Bats, Buses and Bears! Crafts for Letter B

Letter of the Week Packet for B