Playgroup Project: JKL

Alright, this week we focused on the letters JKL. Little Bear actually did two letters at playgroup today, I was very proud of her.

J is for Jacket.

Little Bear really loved gluing the buttons on.

K is for Kangaroo.

As you can see, Little Bear put the leg and head in the wrong spot.

L is for Lion.

This was my favorite one today. It is SUPER cute! However, it was also super hard getting the yarn to stay in the right place!

I finally figured out where I am going to put all this. I have a binder and page protectors. We are going to have one page dedicated to the letter. On one side, we will have the letters and glued on it will be something that starts with that letter. Such as B and Beans and C and Cotton balls. On the other side, will be a black paper and we will make our letters out of yarn. Then I have a page for the playgroup project and on the back of that I have an animal coloring page starting with that letter. So far the book looks AMAZING. I can not wait for it to be done. Little Bear loves flipping through the book and seeing all the letters we have done so far. Will post more details about the gluing the letters when I figured everything out.

For ABC, click here!
For DEF, click here!
For GHI, click here!

B is for Butterflies!

B is for Butterflies!

Today, B is for Butterflies! We started today by making a butterfly crown. We got the butterfly crown idea and pattern from First Palette. I let her color them how she wanted. She used markers and her dinosaur stamps.

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Then we read two books. The first was Waiting For Wings by Lois Ehlert. It goes through the Butterflies life, first as a caterpillar, then a cocoon then finally a butterfly. Then it shows butterflies getting nectar. The back of the book has all the different butterflies you can find in the book and their names. So you can identify them. It also does the same for the flowers. The pictures are very bright and colorful. Perfect for little children.

The second book we read was Dinosaurs ROAR, Butterflies SOAR! By Bob Barner. I could not turn down a book about dinosaurs since Little Bear loves Dinosaurs! This book is neat that it talks about butterflies and dinosaurs co existing together. It has very nice colorful pictures. Little Bear liked looking for the butterflies on each page.

After reading, we did our letter craft. Turing the Little B into a butterfly. We got the idea from Totally Tots. However, our "little b" is very different from Totally Tots. Little Bear had fun sticking on the stickers and gluing the beads, though so it was worth it.

After the letter craft, we worked on our handwriting. As you can see, Little Bear really liked her butterfly crown!

After our handwriting, we worked on our art project! Today, we made a butterfly out of a paper plate! We got the idea for this craft from TLC. Little Bear loved this craft, because she loves to paint!

Our finished project does look a lot differently then TLC's. We used the materials we had, plus I liked letting Little Bear paint, instead of using pink plates.

B is for Bee!

B is for Bee!

This week we are focusing on the letter B. Today, B is for Bee! First we put our letter B on the tree.

Then we moved on to reading a book about a Bee. We read Buzz by Eileen Spinelli. Its about a Bee that loves to fly, but then she finds out the Bees are not supposed to fly and so she finds her self grounded. What is she to do? Little Bear seemed to like the book. It has great illustrations.

After the story, we did our Big B craft. The B turned into a Bee. We got the idea from Totally Tots.

After the letter craft, we worked on our handwriting.

Then after working on our handwriting, we made a Bee out of a paper plate. We got the idea from DLTK. Little Bear loved this craft! I think mostly because she loves to paint, but still it was a great idea!

Another great idea to go with this theme are printable bug packs from 3 Dinosaurs. They fit perfectly with this weeks themes which are bees and butterflies. They have a lot of different activities for kids, including matching, patterns, and size sorting!

A is for Apples!

A is for Apples!

Today, A is for Apples!

We started by reading the book The Seasons of Arnold's Apple Tree by Gail Gibbons. This book was pretty good. It went through the 4 seasons and talked about how an apple tree grows. It also talked about what you could do with the tree (such as build a swing and a tree house) It also talked about making apple cider and apple pie. Very educational but still engaging.

After the story, we did our letter craft. We got the letter craft from Totally Tots. This is a little "a" turned into an apple. After the letter craft we worked on writing our letter A. After our writing practice, we moved on to our activity.

 

Apple Math! Got this idea from Mamas Like Me. I LOVE this idea. I made 5 trees. On one side they are numbered 1-5 and the other side 6-10. I placed the trees on a piece of white paper. First we worked on the 1-5 side or the addition side. We lined up the trees then Little Bear placed the apples (beads) on the tree. (Tree 1 gets 1 apple, tree 2 gets 2, etc) Then she rolled a dice and had to add that many apples to the tree. Then I asked her how many apples she had all together. Great concept to beginning addition!

When we finished the first 5 trees, we flipped them over and worked on the subtraction side or trees 6-10. Again Little Bear placed the amount of apples on the tree. This time however, when she rolled the dice we took that amount of apples off the tree. Then I would ask her how many apples were left on the tree. Can not stress how much I love this idea! It was fun and easy for her to use. We plan to use this more then just during A week. I also think I might do what the website said and show her the math problem on a white board as well. I think I might actually glue the trees to the paper and have a front and back side to the paper. That way they do not move as much. We added this activity to our activity basket. Learn about our activity box here.

Playgroup Project: ABC Book...

Playgroup Project: ABC Book...

All summer long, our playgroup has been working on our ABCs. Almost every week we got together and created an ABC craft. We did 3 letters a week except for the last 2 weeks, when we did 4 letters. With all the letter crafts Little Bear did, I decided to put it together and make an ABC book. However, we added more pages then just the letter crafts. Our book has 4 pages per letter. I am using the letter P as an example.

The first page has the upper and lowercase letters cut out of paper. I used scrap-booking paper for the different designs. Then we used an item that begins with that letter to form the uppercase letter. In this case, we used Pompoms to make a P. Then we used clip-art from magazines to show what begins with P. We also glued the letter p from magazines to show the different ways to write the letter.

The second page, we used black construction paper. Then we glued yarn into the shape of the upper and lower case letters.

The third page contains our playgroup craft. In this case, it was a p in the shape of a parrot. I had printed letters from First School. The page has the upper and lowercase letter plus about 5 pictures of things that start with that letter. We glued the letters in a different book, however we used the little pictures in this ABC Book. We glued them to the playgroup craft.

The fourth and final page has an animal coloring picture. I got all the coloring pages from First School. On the animal coloring page, we stuck a letter sticker on the top.
And that is our ABC Book that we have been working on all summer long! It is HUGE. However, Little Bear loves to flip through it and look at everything. It is a great learning tool. What do you think?

For ABC, click here!
For DEF, click here!
For GHI, click here!
For JKL, click here!
For MNO, click here!
For PQR, click here!
For STUV, click here!
For WXYZ, click here!