The Phoneme /b/

I was going to say the letter B, but that would be counter to the way we’ve been working on things. Sometimes I still slip up with the whole phonetic letters vs letter names thing even though I’ve been working on it for at least a year now.

I’ve been feeling like I’ve been falling down with Rebecca’s homeschool activities, and I decided that I would have a much easier time thinking of activities to offer her (our homeschool is strictly voluntary and fun since she’s only 3) if I had a theme to guide me. So today we’ve been focusing on /b/.

Bat Ball

Coincidentally I finished making a Bat Ball last night. I want to make a bunch of these little ball monsters with mouths to fill with candy to have a monster hunt, like an easter egg hunt, for Halloween. And if I get them done fast enough then maybe they’ll be my first Etsy pattern. We’ll see if I can get them done by the end of September.

So the first activity of the day was throwing the bat ball around. It’s being quite vigorously play tested.

B

Then we made a big B and little b out of beans, from Apples and Jammies via ABC and 123. Rebecca is working on her lower case letters first, so I did the capital B and she did the lower case, because she wanted to work together.

running b

After the fine motor skills we went outside for some running on a very large small ‘b’, drew lots of chalk pictures of things that start with /b/,

blue feet

and examined our blue feet.

bean bags

Then we did some number work, counting and lining up our counting b-bean b-bags, and walking on the resulting number b-balance b-beam and counting up and down.

Then we did some ‘b’ worksheets from some alphabet workbooks we have, and made an alphabet binder to collect work in. Rebecca enjoyed snapping the rings open and shut, and using the three-hole-punch.

Blueberries

For snack we ate blueberries,

tiny b

and played with the /b/ miniatures from the phonics miniatures that we’ve been collecting.

What a b-ful morning! Luckily /b/ is a really easy phoneme to do this with, because I didn’t do any planning, I know some of the phonemes are going to be much harder!

Maybe I should suggest lacing b-beads next? Next phoneme up I think is going to be /w/. I’ll get to work on the witch ball.

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I can’t believe how much you’re getting done with a newborn, I’m very impressed.

Your bat ball is really cute, and I love the idea of a Halloween monster hunt!

I just discovered your blog, and I love it. I’m just starting to think about these types of activities, as my son is approaching 2. I love the idea of the phonics miniatures! How do you store them? I’m thinking some sort of compartments would really appeal to my son. Maybe sewing little bags with the appropriate letter appliqued on them. Hmmmm. Thanks for the ideas.

On second thought, now I’m thinking about a design of something like an oversized advent calendar with a pocket for each letter of the alphabet and the miniatures inside.

batball is so cute! love that you are trying to start a weed garden at school. i read somewhere that a weed was really just a “misplaced plant,” I have taught this to my girls and they won’t even let me use the word “weed” anymore. ha, maybe you should call your weed garden “a garden of misplaced plants,” maybe it will be accepted better. good luck with it!

lisa

I love the giant letter b on the driveway with sidewalk chalk. We are big fans of whole body learning at our house. Putting this on my list of things to do with my preschooler this year. Just found your blog today and I’m really enjoying it, especially your fairy garden posts.

Thanks! Ever since starting preschool I’ve pretty much dropped the home school activities from home and blog, but I’m glad you enjoyed the archive!

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