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Preschool Corner: All About ‘Bb’


While I have my lesson plans from last year and I know that the kids are not the same…for some reason I am feeling the need to do things ‘new’ and ‘different’ this year.

Go figure.

It was a full day though and we had a lot of fun stuff going in the classroom ~ playing and making messes.

Alphabet Book

This year’s alphabet page craft was different than our bumblebee from last year. I had all the pieces cut out and then got a great idea for another craft {also bee related}, so I ended up cutting and creating a different page for the alphabet book ~ a boat. Not just any boat, mind you.


A brown boat with a blue sail in the blue water.

‘Cause I’m all about the letter ‘Bb’, I am! If you’re going to do it ~ might as well go overboard {there was really no pun intended on that…}.

You’ll need:

~ Brown and blue construction paper
~ Glue sticks
~ 8 1/2 x 11 piece of paper {you can print off the alphabet book if you’d like!}

To Make:

{Note: I cut out all the pieces ahead of time since we have a short amount of time and a lot to do ~ otherwise I would recommend letting the kids cut out their own shapes!}

1. Trace a boat shape, a triangle and a ‘wave’ pattern out for your child.
2. Let your cut out the pieces for the boat.
3. Glue the water and boat onto your paper.

Art

After last week’s alligator craft, I wanted to keep the theme going of making a craft that is shaped like the letter we are studying. Since I also have an overabundance of foam sheets from the Dollar Tree, I have been using those ~ and they are a little more sturdy than construction paper.

The Bee ‘Bb’ was the result of my efforts. :) If you’d like more specifics on how to make it, you can find direction in my ‘Bb’ is for Bee Craft post.

We also had fun making ‘Bandaid Butterflies’ that I found over at No Time for Flashcards. Cheap ol’ bandaids at the Dollar Tree in some great funky colors made it fun, fun, fun.

Cooking ~ Blueberry and Banana Smoothies

There wasn’t much cooking involved – just blending! :) I hauled the blender in and we made banana and blueberry smoothies. Want to try them too?

You’ll Need:

~ 1/2 cup of blueberries, fresh or frozen
~ 1 banana {peeled, of course!}
~ 1 1/2 cups of milk
~ sweetener to taste {we used a few tablespoons of sugar}
~ ice to thicken

Drop it all in the blender and enjoy!

Game

We played a quick game of “I Spy” or find…and looked around our room to see what we could find that started with the letter ‘B’. Here’s what we found {and I borrowed this great idea from Carisa at 1+1+1=1 ~ her color ‘I Spy’ is wonderful!!}:

Math

Balancing and Estimating. I brought my scales in, along with my counting bears and we checked to see if bears of different colors weighed the same, compared the weight of bears to blocks, counted, sorted….and had fun learning.

Songs and Rhymes

We used a bee puppet during our circle time and sang a fun little song:

Do You Like to Buzz?
sing to: “Do Your Ears Hang Low”

Do you like to buzz?
Are you covered all in fuzz?
Do you call a hive a home
In the garden where you roam?
Do you like to make honey
Are your stripes a little funny?
Do you like to buzz?

Additional Resources

Be sure to check out another one of my posts for some more ideas for teaching the letter ‘B’ – there are some different activities and printables in that post too!

Stories & Books We Used:

About the Preschool Corner:

The Preschool Corner is a place for us to share the ideas we are using during our “preschool time” with our kids. You can join in the fun and record what you are doing in your house. Please link your exact blog post to the Mr. Linky below(if you have questions feel free to ask). Be sure to link back to this blog post so that your readers can find some other great ideas too!The guidelines can be found here if you need them.

Share what you’ve been doing in your house this week!

 

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‘Bb’ is for Bee {Craft}

I tried to find something fun to represent the letter ‘Bb’ for our preschool class and have to say that I am in love with this little bee.

I have to warn you though ~ if you use a foam sheet and a marker, the smudge factor will be involved. Fingertips will be black and marker color will spread like wildfire.

But the result is just so cute!! {dontcha think?}

What You’ll Need:

  • Yellow foam sheet or construction paper
  • Black sharpie or marker
  • Wax paper
  • Googly eye
  • Black pipe cleaner
  • Glue

How to make the ‘B’ Bee:

  1. Cut an uppercase ‘B’ out of the foam sheet or construction paper. I used a foam sheet that was about 4″ x 5″ in size.
  2. Cut out two circles from the wax paper to use as wings for your bee. {I used one black, one wax paper so the wings would show up for the pictures}.
  3. Cut the pipecleaner into two pieces ~ one should be 1/3 of the length of the pipecleaner, the other 2/3 of the length.
  4. Poke the small pipecleaner through the bottom base of the ‘B’ to use as a ‘stinger’.
  5. Poke the longer pipecleaner through the upper part of the ‘B’ to use as the bee’s antennae.
  6. Have your child draw stripes on the B using the marker.
  7. Glue on the googly eye and wings.

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Preschool Corner: All About ‘Aa’

Preschool time with co-op is a little bit different {and on a much larger scale} than trying to focus on one child at home. I’ve worked in the 4 year old class with one of our local co-ops for the last few years and love it. This year I’ll be teaching the letters A-E with the class and we started our first week with the letter ‘Aa’.

Alphabet Book

Throughout the year, the kids create an alphabet book to take home and it is filled with crafts that they make – each letter of the alphabet having it’s own craft. The apple craft we did last year went over really well, so we did that one again this year.


You’ll need:

~ Red construction paper apple
~ White rectangle piece of construction paper
~ Black inkpad
~ Green construction paper leaves

To Make:

1. Have your child cut out the apple if they are able to use scissors {we cut them out ahead of time due to limited time}.
2. Let your child rip the apple in half, horizontally.
3. Rip the white piece of paper on both sides, so the apple ‘core’ appears to be eaten.
4. Have your child stamp their fingerprint on the white ‘core’ of the apple to make seeds.

Art

I can’t take credit for this too-cute alligator Aa. No Time for Flash Cards has directions for the craft. We used foam sheets that I picked up at the Dollar Tree along with construction paper teeth and googly eyes. Super fun and a cute take home for the kids to remember the letter we studied!

Math

Apples were the primary focus of the week, so during our circle times we had several different activities we used to focus on different math skills.

Sequencing

I printed off a page of different sized apples from File Folder Fun and cut them out and the kids took turns putting them in order from smallest to largest.

Apple Tree felt board ~ How does an apple grow? I have a cute little apple tree that we used on the floor to show how apples grow. We put flower blossoms on the tree first and then they ‘grew’ into big and little apples. We picked the apples off the tree and sorted them by big and little and counted to see which one we had more of.

Cuisenaire Rods ~ We used cuisenaire rods to build the letter Aa. First we used the big rods and then tried using the little ones. We also made an apple tree, airplane and an alligator with the rods {this is something I did with Zachary, not the class!}. :)

Science

The biggest hit of the day revolved around taste-testing apples. I brought in three different colors of apples and sliced them up. Everybody took a bite of each apple slice and then we talked about how the apples tasted {sweet, sour, tangy, etc…}, the different colors of the apples, and everyone voted on their favorite tasting apple and we graphed the results.

Golden Delicious was the winner by ONE vote…why those kiddos liked the Granny Smith is beyond me….

Songs and Rhymes

During our circle time we did several songs and games together. After reading through The Lady with the Alligator Purse, I sang the song to them while ‘reading’ the book again {I love that book!}.

Apple Tree {song and game}

We passed around a little apple {like playing Hot Potato} while singing the song below and whoever was left holding the apple got tickled!

Apple tree, apple tree,
Will your apples fall on me?
I won’t cry, I won’t shout,
If your apples knock me out!

Additional Resources

Be sure to check out my other post for some more ideas for teaching the Letter Aa – there are some different activities and printables in that post too!

Stories & Books We Used:

About the Preschool Corner:

The Preschool Corner is a place for us to share the ideas we are using during our “preschool time” with our kids. You can join in the fun and record what you are doing in your house. Please link your exact blog post to the Mr. Linky below (if you have questions feel free to ask). Be sure to link back to this blog post so that your readers can find some other great ideas too!

The guidelines can be found here if you need them.

Share what you’ve been doing in your house this week!

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Preschool Corner: Alphabet Picnic Table Talk

ABC & 123 is hosting “Picnic Table Talk” and this week the focus is all about the alphabet. Since this year I’ve been working through the alphabet with Zachary, I thought that it would be fun to share some of my favorite resources from this past year {and yes, I know we still have a few letters to finish up!}.

You can still link up and share what you’ve been doing in your preschool corner this week at the end of this post, but here’s a little summary of some of my favorite resources.

Alphabet Art includes some fun ways to teach the alphabet through the use of poems, fingerplays, crafts and more. There are ideas for every letter of the alphabet and the majority of the activities are easy to pull together ~ and simple for the kids to create/do.

My ABC Bible Verses has a verse for each letter of the alphabet along with a short little story/devotional. The verses are simple and include reminders to review the verses that have already been learned.



Leap Frog: Letter Factory
~ We have the older version of this dvd and all of our kids have had so much fun and learned so quickly with this dvd!! I promise you, it’s worth it to buy the whole set of them! The new dvd is releasing a little later this month and will also include the lowercase letters. LOVE them!

And while we’re on the topic of Leap Frog, the Fridge Phonics are wonderful too. We have the upper and lowercase letters for it, but the songs are catchy and we use the magnets to spell words, etc…It’s worked it’s way through all of our kids so far!

If you’d like to see some of the things that we’ve done in our alphabet studies this year, be sure to check out all of the Alphabet Time posts. I also have some great Preschool Printables too {of course I’m partial to them since I made them!}.

About the Preschool Corner:

The Preschool Corner is a place for us to share the ideas we are using during our “preschool time” with our kids. You can join in the fun and record what you are doing in your house. Please link your exact blog post to the Mr. Linky below (if you have questions feel free to ask). Be sure to link back to this blog post so that your readers can find some other great ideas too!

The guidelines can be found here if you need them.

Share what you’ve been doing in your house this week!

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The Preschool Corner: Letter U

This week I used lesson plans from Itty-Bitty Bookworm‘s Bo Curriculum {Year 1 month of June} for the letter U. The majority of ‘U’ ideas that I was coming up with all revolved around the word ‘under’ or ‘umbrella’ so I went with ‘underwater/under the sea’ and focused on an ocean theme, using several different WONDERFUL books {because I was thinking a week of umbrellas might just throw me over the deep end}.

We borrowed the book Over in the Ocean and also Underwater Counting from the library and had a lot of fun doing the activities that Itty Bitty Bookworm lays out in the plans ~ let me tell you, it’s all there for you! We still continued with our alphabet book and letter sheet activity on our own, but otherwise pulled our activities from the lesson plans. The plans provided so much more to do, but these are the things that we chose to do together this week {especially as the last part of the week one of the other kids was sick and at the doctor}.

ABC Book: Umbrella

Umbrellas were very appropriate this week since all it has done is RAIN.

Activities: In the Ocean Booklet

Itty-Bitty’s plans provide a booklet for children to work on over the course of a few days. It includes sea animal words for children to trace along with pictures on each page for them to color.

Fun Activities: Underwater Watercolor

While the girls were creating their watercolor masterpieces, Zachary wanted to participate too, so he painted his own picture. Can you figure out what it is?


It’s a pregnant scuba diver. The grey is her air tank and the bumps on the front are her baby belly. The dots are the air bubbles {apparently he’s an abstract artist}.

Language: Oral Word Play, Word Sorting, & Sentence Starters

Oral Word Play

We used some underwater words to help with phoneme awareness: goldfish, seahorse, dolphin, clownfish, shark, and whale. For the first few words we used this pattern:

Say goldfish. “Goldfish.” Say it again, but don’t say fish. GOLD
Say goldfish. “Goldfish.” Say it again, but don’t say gold. FISH

We did some different sounds with some of the other words too, but Zachary had a fun time figuring out the different words and how to separate them.

Word Sorting

Zachary used some animal word cards and sorted them by which group they belonged in: zoo, farm, and ocean animals. He looked at the animal on the cards and then wrote their names in the correct column.

Sentence Starters

I asked Zachary to help fill in the blanks of this sentence: If I could be a sea creature I would be a ____________ because ________________________.

His answer? I would be an octopus because they squirt black stuff.

Yes. He is a boy all around.

Math: Counting by 2’s and Graphing Goldfish

Underwater Counting by

Movement: Underneath Things & Fish, Fish, Shark


Zachary took some time to go around the house and see what he might be able to fit underneath. We counted how many things there were upstairs and downstairs and then added them together.

Upstairs: Girl’s bunkbeds, kitchen table, barstools, his bunkbed, Mommy & Daddy’s bed = 5

Downstairs: Futon, Mommy’s worktable, Daddy’s workbench, the spare bed, the desk, the coffee table, the shelves in the closet, 2 chairs = 9

Fish, Fish, Shark ~ This is a game that is just like Duck, Duck, Goose. Just use the words Fish, Fish, Shark instead! Much fun {especially when the shark chomps you}.

Letter Sheet/Collage

Click thumbnail to download printable

Stories and Books

Over in the Ocean: In a Coral Reef by Marianne Berkes. The artwork alone in this book will amaze you. The book can either be read or sung to the tune of ‘Over in the Meadow’. We had the board book version of this book, but it also gives ideas for hand motions to go along with the rhyme. Kids count their way through the ocean with sea creatures and a sweet rhyme. LOVED it!

Underwater Counting: Even Numbers by Jerry Palotta. The pictures in this book are also wonderful. After the number one, the book begins counting fish and underwater animals by 2’s all the way up to the number 50. When we had finished reading the book, the kids figured out that the number being talked about was also hidden somewhere in the picture ~ too fun!! They’ve been looking at this book all week.

Things We Used

About the Preschool Corner:

The Preschool Corner is a place for us to share the ideas we are using during our “preschool time” with our kids. You can join in the fun and record what you are doing in your house. Please link your exact blog post to the Mr. Linky below (if you have questions feel free to ask). Be sure to link back to this blog post so that your readers can find some other great ideas too!

The guidelines can be found here if you need them.

Share what you’ve been doing in your house this week! Please leave a comment if you link {since Mr. Linky doesn’t let me know when you join up!}.

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Be sure to check out Itty-Bitty Bookworm for
great resources and wonderful curriculum!

Preschool Corner: Letter T


The last few weeks have been full of craziness with traveling, sick kids, parents moving….and finally this week someone {ahem} got back on the homeschooling wagon and had fun with ‘T’ activities. I have one other project that we started (and are are still working on) that I will post early next week. It’s just too cute and I’m going to do a separate post on it in a few days.

Here’s a little bit about our ‘terrific’ week:

ABC Book: Turtle

We used a small paper plate as the ‘shell’ for our turtle. You can find a template for the turtle’s head and feet here. Just for fun we added some googly eyes too.


Alphabet Activities: Cuisenaire Rods, Building T’s and Opposites

Cuisenaire rods: I believe that these are my "new favorite" manipulative. I picked them up at a used curriculum sale last week and Zachary had so much fun playing with them. The rods all vary in length (each length is a different color) and I also picked up a ‘workbook’ that had alphabet activities (create a top, a train, etc…).

Building T’s: We used our 1" blocks to make both upper and lower case T’s.

Opposites: During the week we talked about words that were opposite and started with the letter ‘T’. Here are a few we used: bottom (top), tender (tough), go straight (turn), easy (tricky), nice (terrible), short (tall), awake (tired) and false (true).

Art Activities: Train and Handprint Tulips

The Train: I’ll be sharing the train we’re making in a few days {it’s just too cute!!}. Updated: click here for the link.

Handprint Tulips: We also made some tulips using Zachary’s hand and arm. To make your own flowers you will need:

  • green and another color of paint for the ‘flower’
  • brushes
  • 12"x18" paper
  • and lots of messiness protection (i.e. a smock)
  1. Paint your child’s hand the color you would like the flower to be
  2. Then from the inside of their wrist down to the elbow, paint green for a ‘stem’.
  3. Press their hand and arm onto a piece of 12"x18" paper and repeat until you have paint everywhere…or pretty flowers.

Fun Activities: Towers, Tea Tasting, & Tunnels

A Tower of 20: Everyone had fun pulling out the 1" blocks to make tall towers. Zachary counted out 20 blocks and kept trying to build his tower 20 high. It took him a little bit (and a few interferences from a younger brother) before he was able to build it using all the blocks – but he did it!!

Tea Tasting: There are tons of tea bags sitting around our house so we brewed up 4 different kinds of tea {of the non-caffeinated version thank.you.very.much} and held a little taste test. Verdict was that peppermint tea was the tastiest!

Tunnels: Blankets, pillows and fun. Need I say more?

Letter Sheet/Collage

FireShot capture #221 - 'T_Worksheet_pdf (application_pdf Object)' - homeschoolcreations_com_files_T_Worksheet_pdf 
Math: Two’s, Ten’s and Telling Time

Counting by 2’s and 10’s: Zachary is can count by 10’s up to 100 now and is practicing counting up to 10 by 2’s (and doing quite marvelous!!).

Telling Time: We have a great little folder game for telling time that I made several years ago and Zachary is practicing telling time to the hour and half hour (we’re getting there!!). I found a cute notepad of blank clock faces at a local teaching store, drew the hour/minute hands on them and glued them into a file folder. I made up little matching time cards (4:00, 4:30, etc…) that match along with the clock faces.

Verse: Proverbs 3:5

"Trust in the Lord with all your heart." ~ Proverbs 3:5

About the Preschool Corner:

The Preschool Corner is a place for us to share the ideas we are using during our "preschool time" with our kids. You can join in the fun and record what you are doing in your house. Please link your exact blog post to the Mr. Linky below (if you have questions feel free to ask). Be sure to link back to this blog post so that your readers can find some other great ideas too!

The guidelines can be found here if you need them.

Share what you’ve been doing in your house this week!

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