"What?!! That's not right!" I thought, "I need to do more active and sensory stuff than I'm doing."
"Is that my kitty?" asked Little Miss, watching me work on the Glimmercat in the picture.
"No, I was going to let you play today," I told her. She stayed right there watching my computer.
"I want a kitty," she commented. Okay, so maybe it was just Mommy who was hoping for a break.
"Do you want me to give you some work to do?"
"Yeah!" she rejoiced, in a happy little voice.
So, I printed out a few items from my letter of the week B packet (https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/B-Letter-of-the-Week-1958162) , and here's what we did:
DAY 1 - Introducing B
Here's the Path of Motion for B. Okay, (aside from the obvious health endangerment issues evident from a baby drinking from a bottle that a cat's been putting its paw on) the whole idea here is that this cute baby asks for her bottle but she's a baby and can't say the whole word so what comes out is: "B-buh!"
We also sang our little song for the B sound, sung to "The Bear Went Over the Mountain", shown in the lesson plan below:
"Buh" is the sound for B, of course, but try not to drag out the "buh" sound but keep it quick and poppy. I usually write out "buh" to distinguish it from the letter's name in the lesson plans, but when teaching the sounds, you want to keep them short and quick.
First, we printed out the Color Sheet, and this time, after Little Miss colored the cat and the baby, she used pom poms to fill in the letter B. We used big pom poms for the big B and little pompoms for the little b.
Next, I printed out the Matching Game and we went over the pictures to make sure she knew what they all were. There was one that surprised me: she didn't know what a bat was yet. She said, "Flying", which was a pretty good guess for that little bat picture. So, I explained it was a bat, and filed that information away. When it comes to doing our bat craft, I will make sure that I show her a video of little bats (Hopefully, I can find one that isn't too creepy!).
I never insist on kids coloring, but as you can see up above, she wanted to. I did pull out my special Prismacolor pencils, because they are much nicer for small children to color with than regular colored pencils, and they give her such nice control over her coloring.
She wanted to own her cutting a bit more this time. Paper is still unwieldy, but I have to say she did a really good job. She was forgetting to close the scissors and tried to force them through the paper, so I gently put my hand on hers and helped her close the scissors. But she's holding the paper this time. Kids learn so quick!
Mommy and Little Miss then played a Memory Matching game with the pieces she had cut out. She did a great job this time. She and Mommy tied with three matches each. For only her second game, that's awesome!
And then, she was done! Just like that. Which is about right. I'd say we spent about 30 minutes total on this work, and then she felt she had completed enough work and was ready to go play again.
Teaching Tip: Please remember, these little people are still VERY little people. Twenty to 30 minutes is all you need for a day of this kind of "work". And for smaller ones, even less time is okay. As they get older, you will be able to tell when they are ready to do more. At this age, their play is STILL incredibly important, probably more so than any "work" they do.
DAY 2 - BUS!
First, we did the little Bus puzzle. Little Miss feels that she is quite a Puzzle Pro since she did her first one last week. Grandma was here to help her with this and I think she was having fun showing off a little.
Next, we did the Matching the Letter worksheet. First, I went over the letters with her on the left side. Then, we talked about the pictures on the right. It was good to go over both. Little ones need a lot of repetition. And then, with Mommy's help, we did this one together with a pencil. I might let her do it again, tomorrow with a highlighter. We'll see. That was all we did on this day because she did a special Reading Literacy activity with Grandma (see the letter L packet) and was outside doing a Scavenger Hunt, so I figured this was plenty.
DAY 3 - BEARS & BERRIES!
Today was all about Bears! Below, you can see the craft sheet we used from our Letter B packet. This is our little B is for Bear craft.
Little Miss was all ready to go. Because there were little parts to cut out, I planned on cutting all four paws at least, but she really wanted to try the face on her own...
Here she is with her finished product...
I told her to hold onto her little bear while we read a story about a little bear...
This is such a wonderful picture book and most people are familiar with it. We developed our letter B Reading Literacy page around this Caldecott winner. So, we read the story together and...
...then we did the Reading Literacy page.
Little Miss is too young for the sentence writing, but she's ready for this activity, especially since I have blueberries for her to do it with. The picture book is all about a little girl named Little Sal who picks berries and puts them in her pail (some of the time), and with this worksheet we get to do the same thing...and then eat them, just like Little Sal.
Now this is fun! And great practice with numbers and counting. We haven't done too much with numbers, so counting berries up to five and then getting to eat them is delightful and just the right level!
What about the number activity below?
She needed help finding the numbers, and making sure to just color in the shape with the number was tricky. But, she started getting the hang of it by the time we had finished the blue sky together...and then she was having fun revealing the bear that was hidden with the numbers. And she finished coloring in the green bushes all by herself!
After all that number work, it seemed perfect to end with the Bear Dot to Dot page. Now, we worked on this together, finding the numbers and then Mommy going over how to draw from one line to the next. I don't expect her to do this kind of thing by herself for a loooooong time. But doing it together is great practice.
DAY 4 - BUTTERFLIES!
I don't know about your kids, but my Little Miss loves butterflies. So, we couldn't miss the opportunity to do something for butterflies. Now, we could have done this one, which is included in our Letter B packet:
And if you happen to notice the butterfly bread craft that we did in that posting, that was also a lot of fun!
So, I wanted to do something neat and different on this day. And so I made this:
And then, we added some bow-tie pasta that she painted, to make this:
This craft has its own special blog here: http://glimmercat.blogspot.com/2015/09/b-is-for-butterfly-craft-freebie.html and although the craft is not in our regular B packet, this cute flowery background is available here for free download: https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/B-is-for-Butterfly-Craft-Freebie-2072841
DAY 5 - BATS & BOUNCING!
We had a weekend in between Day 4 and today, so I reintroduced the first B page we did and reminded Little Miss that B says buh! This time, she filled in the B with counting cubes.
I try to reinforce that the Capital is "Big B" and the lowercase is "little b", when I talk about them.
Then, in preparation for our Bat Craft, we went to the computer and found these two very fun Bat videos. We began with this one of an adorable baby bat that is being hand-fed with human hands: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T84jdO8YrYA
Usually, at this age, it's really better to find bat videos that are not going to creep children out. I loved to see Little Miss cooing as she watched this one, all smiles. And my son was commenting, "I wish we had a baby bat!" That is called a successful introduction to bats. We followed it up with this one from the San Diego Zoo because it shows adult fruit bats eating, flying and hanging upside down, which are the things that make this little creature so fascinating to watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSCAZvrAREk
Teaching Tip: When showing children YouTube videos, always preview them yourself in advance and search for the ones that are short (like maybe 1 to 3 minutes in length) and show a lot of action.
After those videos, Little Miss was raring to go on her bat craft. Here's our lesson plan that shows our "B is for Bats" printable:
She began cutting out the wings all by herself, and was pretty pleased with herself. Then, she asked for help when it got tricky.
I didn't have a brown pompom on hand, but I did have a nice fluffy white one that we easily rolled around in some paint.
I have to admit, it's not as cute as that baby bat in the first video! But Little Miss liked this fun, easy little craft.
Next, I wrote a great big chalk B on the sidewalk outside. Little Miss got her bouncy ball and I had her bounce her ball on the big B and say the B sound when she did it.
A little later, her brother wrote a few more chalk B's on the sidewalk and both of them bounced from B to B.
B is for bouncing! Now that's something a kinesthetic learner can remember!
That's all for the letter B --if you'd like to purchase our Letter of the Week packet for B, it is available here: https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/B-Letter-of-the-Week-1958162
And for those of you with little kinesthetic learners of your own, stay tuned for next week with the letter C!
