B Week

         There are so many words that begin with the letter B.  We had fun talking about bumble bees, balls, butterflies, balloons, babies, bananas, bubbles, buttons, bears, blocks, and the Tower of Babel.  Brooklyn’s favorite part of the week was the Busy Bear poem that we sang every day.  She loves to get up and moving and especially loves it when I do it with her. On the days that she was more interested in playing than doing school time, the Busy Bear poem would always get her attention.  Our verse for B week was “Be thankful in all things” 1 Thessalonians 5:18.  She once again was able to say it by the end of the week, and we talked a lot about the things we are thankful for.  One morning, after talking about how we can pray and tell God what we are thankful for, I saw her close her eyes and say “Dear Jesus, thank you for tea, thank you for moo moo (which is the nickname she sometimes calls Madelyn), thank you for toys…Amen.” 

          We kicked off the week on Monday with a book about bumble bees and our Bumble Bee B craft.  We played with balls and bounced them back and forth.  Then we ended with a yummy banana for snack.  

          Tuesday was one of those days…you know the kind where no matter what you do, your sweet little child doesn't act so sweet.  After several attempts to start our school time, and Brooklyn continuing to cry or get upset about every little thing, I gave up and spent some time just snuggling her and giving her the attention she was craving.  (It is always a challenge for me to not carry out what I had planned, but I’m working on being more flexible and understanding.)

          Wednesday was a much better day!  Brooklyn spent the morning playing with her little people (one of her favorite things to do), and even set them all up in our school room to join us for our school time. Brooklyn loved teaching the little people all of our songs!

Since we had missed Tuesday’s activities, we decided to do them on Wednesday and use Wednesday’s activities as an option to maybe do another day if we had extra time.  We read a book about butterflies, made an orange slice butterfly for snack,  painted Brooklyn’s feet to make a butterfly, and then played “don’t let the balloon touch the floor."

          Thursday was bear and button day so of course we had to read Corduroy.  I was so excited about our button sorting game, but when I went to get my buttons ready, I realized they must be somewhere in one of the small pile of boxes in the garage that are still waiting to be unpacked.  Bummer!  So we made the best of it and used colorful pom poms (which we called “balls” – hey, it’s still a B word!)  Brooklyn was easily able to sort the “balls” into different piles based on their colors.  Finally, we glued together our bear craft (using pom pom “balls” instead of cute buttons for the eyes L)

                                 

          For our Bible lesson on Friday, we read the story about the Tower of Babel.  We talked about how God made the people speak different languages because they did not listen to Him.  We talked to each other using silly gibberish then built our own tower using blocks – counting the blocks as we built.  Brooklyn was able to stack her tower 8 blocks tall and was very proud of herself!  For our craft, I cut 6 strips of brown paper each a different length.  I then asked Brooklyn to pick out which one was the shortest over and over until we were left with the longest piece.  Then I gave her a glue stick and a piece of paper, mixed up all of the strips again, and this time asked her which one was the longest.  Each time when she picked up the longest piece, she glued it to her paper, from the bottom up, to build her Tower of Babel.  Our snack for the day was graham crackers which I broke into squares so that Brooklyn could build a tower before eating. 

          Although our week didn't go quite as planned, and we didn't get around to doing all of the things I had wanted to do, we still had lots of fun. I recently found an amazing blog with lots of new ideas for teaching all ages.  On this site, there are printables for each letter of the alphabet in dots to allow children to use dot markers to make the letters.  I have printed the entire alphabet and plan to add this activity to our weekly activities.  Check it out for some new ideas for teaching your child.   

          The worksheet for the Baby and Mommy Animal Activity on Wednesday can be found and printed here.

          For details and instructions on these crafts and activities, please click to see my lesson plans.  If you have more ideas for the letter B, please comment and share - I would love to hear them!!