B is for Bugs

After and very successful Letter A Week, we finally made it to Letter B Week!  I think Gooba and I were both very excited to focus on a new letter today.

We began this week with B is for Bugs.  We started our day with a familiar activity - magnets.  Since we used these several times last week, Gooba was a pro.  She took all the magnets and placed them right on all the circles.  After she completed this once she experimented with different sizes of magnets.

 Once we were done with filling in the circles, but not quite done with the magnets, we moved on to another activity and adapted it for use with the magnets.  We used a printable with a capitol B column and a lowercase b column and some bee cards marked with both kinds of letters.  Gooba had to decide where each card went and then stick it there with a magnet.  There seemed to be some confusion at first since all of the bees are the same, just the letters are different.  I'm not sure she was looking at the letter at first.  Eventually we got a little better at noticing and sorting the letters.

 Next we moved on to some "handwriting" practice.  I helped Gooba write a capitol B and a lowercase b and then let her have at the rest.  Pretty much she just scribbled on the paper, but did notice that a lowercase b has a circle on the bottom.  Gooba is a big fan of circles.






The next printable was just a printable with both letters in an outline form with some pictures of bugs on it.  She scribbled on here to, but the scribbling was on top of both letters.  Seemed like there may have actually been a little bit of control somewhere in there!








We traced the letters on the next printable together and then I let her color some herself.  By this point she was quite tired of printable so we just left it and moved on to a favorite activity from last week... the clapper catcher!

This time in our muffin tin we had little erasers in the shapes of bees, ladybugs, butterflies, and dragonflies.  We practiced moving them between different sized containers, counting them, and sorting them.  Later they became "lunch for a dinosaur" and I was no longer allowed to play with or even touch them anymore.

 So after clapper catcher we moved on to another game we played last week - "head and tooshies"  Gooba wanted to play with the magnets again so we adapted this the same way we played the letter sorting game earlier.  She made four quick matches and then was tired of this game.  I'm hoping we can play it again a little bit later.

Then came our favorite activity so far.  I had purchased a bug catcher set at the Dollar Tree which included a little contained, tweezers, and a tiny little net.  I also had purchased a bag of plastic bugs.  I hid the bugs around the house and then had Gooba search for them throughout the house.  Our original plan was to do this outside, but we were having a severe thunderstorm, so staying inside seemed like probably a better idea.

We hid and then found the bugs probably four or five times.  She loved picking them up with the tweezers, putting them in the net, and finally putting them into her little bug container.  After we found the bugs for the billionth time we sorting them by color and we named all the different kinds of bugs.  We also used hiding them as a good way to practice directions.  For example, "this time they are all down low, look down low" or "this time they are all up high."  Needless to say we had a lot of fun with this particular activity.





From bug hunting, we moved onto our bumblebee lacing card.  This seemed much more calm and a great thing for Gooba to do while I was preparing her lunch.  She started here in the kitchen and later moved to the couch, which is where we worked on lacing cards last week.  She is such a creature of habit, I love it!






After lacing cards and after lunch it was time for some quick crafts before nap time.  I cut these pieces out earlier and Gooba helped me glue them onto the half sheets of paper.  She also helped glue the stripes and her personal favorite, the googly eyes.  If it was up to her every craft would have googly eyes on it.  I'm hoping these will help her to tell the difference between Big B and little b throughout the week.

 After a great nap, a trip to the grocery store, and a delicious dinner, we attempted to squeeze in a few more school activities.  We sorted some bugs and flowers pictures cards.  We also played hide and seek with the bugs and bug catching kit with her Daddy.

 Finally the last activity we managed to attempt was the line tracing wipe off page where she could help the bug find the leaf.  She managed despite the look of scribbles on the page to draw a semi-straight line across the page and drew and up and down pattern though it went from the  top to the bottom of the page instead of follow the lines.  Some sort of progress from last week.  I look forward to looking back at these pictures as she grows and getting to see how far she progresses.






Thank you to 1+1+1=1 and Confessions of a Homeschooler for your wonderful printables!