Letter B Week (Day One)

(29 Months)

Last week I created a plan for our Letter B Week.  While I scoured the internet looking for ideas that I thought my little ones would enjoy, the majority of the wonderfully engaging activity sheets come from Erica, Confessions of a Homeschooler.  Thank you again Erica for creating so many fun learning activities and for sharing them with all of us.

After the kids were in bed last night, I took out our easel paper and drew two large, block letter B's (to color), several dotted B's (to trace), a couple of balloons (easy to draw) and a book (again easy to draw).  Little Miss woke up first and when she saw what was on her table, she immediately sat down and started tracing the B's.  Then she traced her brother's B's and asked for "more B's Mommy".

She kept asking for more and more B's, so I grabbed the first activity sheet (it has the child first draw lines, then curves and then the letter B).  As soon as she saw it, Little Miss smiled and said "thank you Mommy, thank you very much."  My heart melted (thank you Erica).  When Wild One saw what his sister was working on, he asked for one too.  Woo hoo!  They are working and asking for more!

We had a fun teddy bear breakfast of whole wheat blueberry pancakes with sliced bananas (notice all those b's?).  They loved having their bears sitting at the table with us.  They polished off half the batch of pancakes between the two of them!  These are delicious!  Instead of artificial sweetener, I used two tablespoons of real maple syrup, plus we added 1/2 tsp of cinnamon and 1 tsp of vanilla.  We needed 1 1/4 cups of milk for the batter (1 cup wasn't nearly enough), and since it's a thick batter we spread the batter out slightly when we ladled it onto the griddle.

My hubby and I created a long list of "b" objects, and I noticed that we have many of these items in the house.  So, I created a really large discovery bin (I used an empty case of copy paper, wrapped both parts in wrapping paper) and then let the kids explore (of course, by the time I grabbed my camera the items were already all over the place):

     letter b sandpaper                    letter b magnets

     bracelet                                   balloons

     butterfly                                  bees/bugs- 10 Little Ladybugs

     bears                                       books

     blue blocks                             blue ball

     basketball                               baseball

     beach ball                               baby blanket

     brush                                      baby

     baby bottle                             bowl

     blue basket                             bandaid

     jar of beans                            box

     bubbles                                  bunny

     banana                                   beads

They both practiced tracing the sandpaper b (rough) and the magnetic b (smooth).

So much fun and it's only day one!