Letter B

This is a fun week! Learning letter B week has butterflies, bees, and bears, great books, cute crafts, and fun songs!

Monday — B is for Butterfly

• Writing Practice: write uppercase letter B. I found a worksheet maker at AtoZteacherstuff.com and made a letter B worksheet.

• Book: Waiting for Wings by Lois Ehlert. First off, Lois Ehlert is an amazing author and illustrator. This is a sweet, gently story about a flower garden awaiting the arrival of the beautiful butterflies. The book uses a rhyming format to teach about a butterfly’s life cycle in short, but informative text. My son and I love the pictures throughout this book. They are so bright and vibrant! This book not only uses color well, but it also utilizes paper as an artform within the book. There is a smaller book inside the book, and less wide pages that utilize the larger pages’ artwork. — this makes reading this book more of an experience. At the end, there is a section that shows each caterpillar, it’s chrysalis, and matching butterfly. My son and I love to look at this part — it’s perfect for young entomologists 🙂

• Craft: Mosaic Butterfly — Supplies needed are multiple colors of construction paper, glue stick, white school glue, scissors, a pipe cleaner, and a pencil. I have a sandwich bag filled with scraps of construction paper that we use for making mosaic crafts. So if you don’t already have small pieces of paper ready to go, cut some out in a variety of sizes and colors.

1. Pick a color for your butterfly. My son is obsessed with the color blue, so he chose blue paper. I folded the paper in half and drew a basic butterfly shape and then I cut it out.

2. My son glued the butterfly to the orange background. Next, he covered his butterfly in glue from his glue stick and added the mosaic paper pieces.

3. Once he was happy with the mosaic look of his butterfly, he picked a pipe cleaner to make the butterfly’s antennae. He folded it in half and used white school glue to attach it to the orange paper.

• Song: Sing along with Super Simple Songs to Butterfly Ladybug Bumblebee: https://supersimple.com/song/butterfly-ladybug-bumblebee/

Tuesday —

• STEM: Butterfly’s Life Cycle — have your child act out a butterfly’s life cycle in 4 steps. (1) EGG: child curls up in a ball on the ground; (2) CATERPILLAR: child hatches from the egg and wriggles on the floor like a caterpillar. Baby caterpillars are hungry so pretend to munch on leaves; (3) CHRYSALIS: stand and place palms together above head to be the hanging chrysalis. Close your eyes and pretend to be asleep; (4) BUTTERFLY: emerge as a butterfly and flit your beautiful new wings.

• Butterfly Life Cycle Fitness: PBS Classroom has a 5 minute butterfly fitness video that incorporates jumping jacks and other movements into learning about butterflies: https://d43fweuh3sg51.cloudfront.net/media/media_files/Butterfly_Life_Cycle.mp4

• Worksheet: Butterfly life cycle– cut out the pictures and glue them in order on another piece of a paper.

• Air Writing: Ask your child to hold up a hand and trace Letter B’s shape with their finger in the air. I was skeptical of air writing at first, but my son really got into it and I found him air writing his letters all on his own.

Wednesday — B is for Bee

• Writing Practice: write lowercase b. I found this worksheet on AtoZteacherstuff.com

• Book: Read The Honeybee by Kristen Hall. This is a truly educational book wrapped up in gorgeous pictures. In this book preschoolers will learn about the importance of bees, how honey is made, and a year in the life of a bee. In addition to all of the great things your preschooler will learn about bees, this book also provides a great look the four seasons and lends itself well to conversations about changes in weather and hibernation. The end of the book provides bee facts for further discussion.

This book got a lot of “buzz” in the library world, so your local library should have a copy. Check it out and enjoy it with your preschooler. It is available for purchase on Amazon. To help cover the costs of this site, I joined Amazon’s Affiliate program, so if you purchase a book through my links, I get a small portion of the sale.

• Craft: Toilet Paper Roll Bee — supplies needed are an empty toilet paper roll, marker, yellow paper, black paper, white tissue paper, pencil, scissors, glue stick, and stapler.

• Song: Sing along with the Laurie Berkner Band to Bumblebee (Buzz Buzz). See it on YouTube. You can’t help but be up and buzzing around for this one 🙂 We love the Laurie Berkner Band and there is a very real possibility that if someone was to drop by unexpectedly, they’d find us dancing around the kitchen to their songs!

Thursday — B is for Bicycle

• Salt Tray Writing: cover the bottom of a shallow tray or pie tin with table salt. Your child can take one finger to trace letter shapes in the salt. Try drawing both uppercase B and lowercase b. Can you make a butterfly shape in the salt tray too?

• Worksheets: letter recognition– color all of the boxes with Letter B b. Trace the letters in the word bicycle and color the picture.

• Book: Read David Shannon’s Duck on a Bike about a duck who sees a bike parked by the farm and decides to give bicycling a try. The other farm animals think this is one of the silliest things they have ever seen. But as duck’s riding improves, the animals are impressed. When a group of children all ride up to the farm and leave their bikes outside, all of the animals hop on! The pictures add to the humor of this silly story and you’ll find yourself giggling alongside your child.

Friday — B is for Bear

• Writing Practice: write uppercase B and lowercase letter b. My son practiced writing letter B with this worksheet from K5 Learning: https://www.k5learning.com/worksheets/kindergarten/printing-letters-b.pdf

• Book : We read We’re Going on a Bear Hunt by Michael Rosen. This books takes the reader on a great adventure through all sorts of obstacles in search of a bear. It is super fun to make all of the noises in the book and act out the story as the book progresses. Every time we read this, my son acts out the story on his own afterward, often using toys or pretending to have his own bear hunt outside as we walk through our neighborhood. You can substitute anything for “bear” and go on all sorts of adventures!

• Craft: Cardboard Bear: supplies needed are cardboard, brown yarn, googly eyes, pompom, scissors, pen/pencil, ribbon/cord for hanging, and white glue.

1. I drew a bear shape on part of a cardboard box and cut it out.

2. We taped the end of a piece of brown yarn to the back of the bear and my 3 year-old wound the yarn around the bear to make it fuzzy.

3. My kiddo picked out yellow googly eyes and a yellow pompom for a nose. The googly eyes were sticker so they were easy to attach. We used white glue to stick on the pompom nose.

4. After the glue was dry, I punched a hole in the top of the bear with a pen. My son picked out a blue cord and I tied it on so he could hang up his cute, fuzzy bear. He really wanted to give his bear to his grandpa, so it ended up being a cute present.

• Song: Sing The Bear Went Over the Mountain. Super Simple Song’s version is available on YouTube.

I hoped you and your preschooler enjoyed learning letter B! Now it is time for letter C.