Sunday, February 7, 2010

Letter of the Week- B

This week's letter was B and B is for: Banana, Books, Beads, Balls, Berries, Balloons... Buckets of fun!
I have to admit I was slightly discouraged this week when Georgia kept calling all our "B's" -A,A,A!! I don't know if A made a really big impact, or if I've just programmed her with that response. I'm going to trust in repetition as our key to learning and be comforted that at least I'm achieving our goal of some fun, intentional play time together! She did recognize a "B" on my T-shirt, though! :)
She wasn't really into coloring, as with crayons or markers, so we Dot-painted a Brown Bear B.
We also made a Banana B- I just drew 2 bananas and a line (not very well!) and let her paint them yellow. Then I cut them out and pasted them into a B on Blue paper.

B is for Book- a trip to the library would have been an awesome activity for this B week, but we didn't make it, so I just pulled out a few random stories from our shelves that had some B words.

B is for Bucket of B!- I found these great Buckets at Target on the $1 aisle- but B-ware, they are not $1! (2.50- not too bad!) I used one to keep some of our B-activities together.
B is for Ball- we took our Big Ball outside to play... (look at that form! Might have a soccer player on our hands... ;)
...until daddy accidentally got it stuck in the tree with one Big Kick!
He got it out- while mommy was B-ing nervous he was going to fall and get hurt!
Meanwhile, Baby Brother was also Busy- eating dirt!
B is for Berries and Bananas- since we like to turn anything we're doing into something we can eat, we made some yummy desserts together. Georgia mixed sugar into our Berries for Berry Shortcake...

And helped make Banana Pudding by unpeeling all the bananas for me and laying the cookies out in our dish.

B is for Binoculars- this was a fun and easy craft! I had Georgia color a piece of paper, then I cut it to wrap around 2 toilet paper rolls- she helped me with the glue stick too! Then I just hole-punched 2 holes in each tube- one at each end, and threaded a pipe cleaner through. Make sure the space between your tubes is narrow enough to put them over your eyes. We secured a bead necklace at one end by twisting the pipe cleaner around it so she could hang it from her neck.
I see you!!

B is for Beads- Georgia loved this activity. And it was so simple! I just gave her a bag of pony Beads and a couple of pipe cleaners- she loved stringing them on, and even did some sorting by colors on her own. Later in the week we did some more Beading with some special Valentine's beads to use next week!

B is for Bubbles- I'd read about Bubble Painting from several other blogs and thought it might be fun to try... I think I did something wrong. It didn't work. We could never get enough bubbles in our bowl to "paint" with, and when we tried to scope them out it just made a big mess. But please don't count this activity out yourself based on our experience- I really think it was just "user error". And Georgia still had fun blowing bubbles!
I even tried a shallower bowl, but that made an even bigger mess!

While we were bubble-ing, I set up baby brother with some pom pom Balls. Again- an idea I got on another blog. The idea was he could scoop out the balls with different sized spoons and put them into different containers. Seemed like something he would be into, since he seems to be in the stage where he enjoys putting things in things. Of course, you've probably already guessed how this one turned out...
...little balls everywhere!!

B is for Balloon- I blew up a few balloons- we started with all Blue, for B, but someone wanted yellow too. Probably Georgia- she likes yellow. They had a great time just kicking them around and bopping each other on the head!
The entry hall was a great place to play with the balloons because they could bounce them off the walls in that narrow space. I loved this pic below- I didn't even realize what Lincoln was up to till I was going thru my pictures at the end of the week. He's recently realized he's now tall enough and strong enough to open the front door and there he is- trying to escape! What you can't see is that Dad has installed an additional sliding bolt at the top of the door to prevent this kind of mischief!

That's all for B! It seems like we did a lot, reviewing it like this, but I think it was just more, smaller activities. It has Ben fun! :)

5 comments:

Jen said...

The binoculars were great idea! I'm planning on trying the bubble painting at some point, so I'll let you know how that goes. Bummer that it didn't work for you. Also, Moms Memories is my friend Melanie that inspired me to get started with the Tot School thing. I love how blogs can connect people in all sorts of ways!

Ashley Matteo said...

i am so impressed with the many ideas and i know yall are having fun! thanks for sharing

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Sony Girl said...

So creative!
Wish you were here to go skiing/snowboarding with us but it is too cold and windy to get out and enjoy the 3 feet of snow.
Miss you, Laura

The Phelps said...

I love reading about your letter weeks. They are great! Give Big sister Georgia and her Brother a Big hug from me!