Letter of the week – Bb is for BEE

It’s that time again! Time to share another letter from our letter of the week series.

It seems to be working out pretty well, learning the alphabet both the upper and lowercase versions of a letter so we’re continuing on with that.

When I thought of the lesson plan for our letter Bb series, I was excited to look for fun activities. Searching online, I saw a lot for Bumblebee theme.I knew it right away that we have to include bumblebee activities in our alphabet learning journey, and I’m so glad we did! It turned out great!

Here are some of the ways we worked with the “Bb is for BEE” theme that you can try with your own little ones.

1. Bb is for BEE craft

 This is such an easy craft to make with Inigo since the stripes for the bumblebee are simple straight lines, this craft is perfect for him to understand the activity. When he is done with the craft. We used again our alphabet stickers to spell out the word BEE. This helps him to recognize other letters aside from our weekly letter task.
2.  Bb is for BEE Arts

Instead of using brushes, we used our tempera paint dub and it’s a messy free arts activity. 
3. Find the Letter Bb game

This activity is a bit tricky since it has a lower case letter b. I was expecting him to get confuse, so I don’t push him that much. But  he did jump on the opportunity to use our tempera dub markers for this letter “Bb” page.

Of course, the idea is to mark the featured letter while recognizing both uppercase and lowercase Bb.
   

4. Pre-writing activity

We will be doing more of a pre-writing skills in our future activities but we will still continue to work on his fine motor skills. Today, we practiced some of the tracing lines using our chubby pencil. I got this from Philippines and it is good for practising pencil grip.  
5. Coloring activity

When i saw this letter Bb activity online I printed it right away though this is not part of our theme. There are so much fun to do with this worksheet. A simple way of learning phonics, tracing the letter Bb, and introducing the pattern.  Patterning activity is great for problem solving and math skills.

 

Letter of the week – Letter Aa Apple Sorting

As we are about to end our Aa is for Apple unit, I decided to try to incorporate apple picking and letter Aa sorting this time.

    It is actually pretty simple to make a fun apple tree of your own! I cut brown construction paper  and we had the perfect trunk for our tree!

Then I painted the paper plate with green tempera to make an apple tree right up on the wall. 

You’ll need some tape to attach your tree to the wall and the printable apples and letter A baskets as well.

After taping the letter A baskets onto the wall, I cutout the apples and marked half of them with an uppercase A and the other half with lowercase.

We talked about the differences between the big A and the little A and after showing Inigo the difference between the two baskets and the corresponding letters on the apples, I let him have at it.

He had a blast picking all of the letter A apples and put them into their correct baskets.

Letter of the week – Aa is for Apple

Inigo and I started our letters of the week activities at home doing some simple, fun, and educational hands-on activities.

This week we started with letter A. 

Here are some of the ways we worked with the “A is for Apple” theme that you can try with your own little ones.

1.  Practice fine motor skills.

I printed upper case A and he embedded it with the apple stickers. He also used our alphabet stickers to spell out the word APPLE.

2. Incorporate the arts! 

He traced the uppercase A with marshmallows, toothpick and tempera paint.

 

3. Pre-writing skills

This free printable for tracing lines is a perfect introduction to writing for him. A perfect way to put those fine motor skills into practice and let him begin to learn to write.

I don’t push holding a pencil or writing until he show interest. In this case, I am not quite sure if he will like this. I am just testing if he will continue the activity. At first, he said he doesn’t want to go through but when I told him that the boy is hungry and needs to eat his apple but the only way he can do that is by crossing the line using his pencil. Then he started to show interest.A simple remarks  can make big a difference to your learner! Keep on motivating them!

  4. Color Recognition

Following his lead and providing him with the next step in learning how to write. I also gave coloring pages. He need to use the right color of the apple.   We had so much fun with these that we are planning to continue for more fun apple theme activities this week. We will be doing Math Skills tomorrow.

Thank you for finding time to read my posts. Please feel free to share them as well! 

Have an inspiring, positive homeschooling ahead! Stay blessed!

STEM Activity – Marshmallows and Toothpicks Structure..

Kuya Angelo has been acting up lately. He’s always looking and begging daddy A to come home early. But the traffic and the travel time takes him approximately 2hrs of driving from his workplace to our house. To divert his attention, I set up an invitation that I know he cannot resist.

Marshmallows + toothpicks = an afternoon of engineering fun! Previously, we did the 2 and 3 dimensional shapes using clay and toothpicks. This time I thought building marshmallows structures was a deliciously entertaining way of reinforcing his learning at home.

Since this our first time to try this engineering activity, our excitement turned into frustration.Using marshmallows in building a tower is unstable, wobbly and always collapsed. 

We almost give up but this activity not only tested our patience but also our determination to finish the task. Talking about resilience huh!

So I dropped the idea of creating a tower but instead, I keep the activity open ended and let him to be as creative as he wanted to be. 

  
After making several attempts, he moved on to making pyramids, then joined them together to make a larger structure.It looks like we came up with a new stress-buster for an awesome time!

 
Thank you for finding time to read my posts. Please feel free to share them as well! 

Have an inspiring, positive homeschooling ahead! Stay blessed!

STEM Activity – Toothpick and Clay Geometry

Happy Wednesday! I just recieved the text from Angelo’s school that there will be no class tomorrow due to teachers training. And while we have extra off we also need to study his Math lesson. 

I love making learning fun in our homeschool…I try anyways!I’m always on the lookout for any STEM project with a WOW factor and today’s engineering activity will definitely cover his Geometry lesson.

In an effort to do that, I introduced the activity by asking him to draw the 2d shapes in our learning journey notebook, while I piled up supplies on the table. Then we started to talk about the sides and vertices so he could gain confidence and get a solid grasp of the activity. We used the toothpicks and clay to build each shape.     This simple demonstration will introduce a complex engineering concept to kids visually. What I loved about this activity was there has been a big interest in 2d and 3d shapes. He has a great time naming the shapes that has parallel and perpendicular lines.  

This just proves the power of differentiation and multiple learning strategies! 

Messy Fun Art Tuesday

Messy play can be fancy and you can prep all sorts of stuff if you have time.But on those days … like most! … when I’m back footed and winging it simple no prep painting sesh is my best friend. Just grab a paint, brush and newspapers and let the kids do the work.