Letter B Activities: B is for Bear

We're behind on our letter unit this week because we've been having so much fun doing the Itty Bitty Bookworm activities, but we did make this cute B is for Bear picture. I've been doing this activity for years, because it's easy and comes out so cute.

I have an ancient bear template that I inherited from the teacher of the classroom next door when I was teaching in CA. In kindergarten the kids would get a pattern copied onto construction paper that they'd then cut out. I'd leave my teacher model up for the kids at station time and they they'd attach all the extras to it themselves. I also used to give them a computer generated precut out saying for the bottom, on that one the letters b whenever they appear are also in blue, but since we're just making one I hand wrote it and underlined our target letter.

I cut this one out for ER and helped her place everything by pointing to where the buttons and bow could go. Then she put them on, we used glue dots because I didn't want to deal with a big glue mess! We recently started using glue sticks too, and let me tell you that's made a huge difference! They work for certain things and the big blue guy was one of them!

If your wondering why everything is blue and not brown or black it's because I think the b sound is easier to hear in the /bl/ blend than in the /br/. We could use black but we don't because I think a blue picture is much prettier to look at☺

Our letter b items for the picture are the bear, buttons, a bow that can be on the ear for a girl or at the neck for a boy -sometimes I use a piece of bow tie pasta for this, and a band-aid. When Blue's Clues was more popular I used to be able to find Blue's Clue's band-aids for this. But now I can't find them anywhere, which is a shame because ER loves that show. We used a Dora one, but I made sure her monkey sidekick named Boots was on it.

We've also been playing Balloon Ball. You make a cone out of construction paper and throw a balloon in the air and try to catch it. ER thinks it's great fun, but the hand eye coordination is not quite there yet. Actually it's pretty far away, because what normally happens is she throws both up in the air at the same time. Then she picks them up off the floor, places the balloon on the cone and announces that she caught it. Too funny!

More great activities to do with your kiddos can be found on Ramblings of a Crazy Woman's Friday Showcase. Jump on and share something you've done too!