More Brown Bear, Brown Bear

Today, Vada finished coloring her pages in her very own and personally colored Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See color identification book that we down loaded for free from 1+1+1=1. Actually, all of the printable's (with the exception of the last activity) was down loaded from 1+1+1=1! I opened the board book to the pages that she was coloring to show her that she was making something similar to the book.

Tonight, I will laminate the pages and put the pages on a ring for her to have as her own little book to carry around.

The next activity that we did was my favorite. I was really quite proud of myself for thinking it up.., well, for putting these two activities together.

Fit-A-Shape is a activity that we've had for sometime now and Looking at Me was one that was downloaded from 1+1+1=1. I joined the two together to make it more interesting for Vada and a little less redundant with the flash card activities that we have been doing in general with the Letter of the Week curriculum (not that she's getting board, just that I want to keep her interested!).

After watching Vada do the first puzzle piece and step on her own I knew that I could step it up a bit for her so I added a couple extra steps to the activity...

I would point to each word as I read the card and then trace the shape with my finger. Then I would slide the correct shape puzzle piece down to be in front of Vada and one of us would remove the shape piece and put it on the desk. Then we would reread the card and put the puzzle piece back into its holder. I would then ask Vada to put the card on top of the puzzle and push the puzzle to the top of the desk and she would. We would then begin the process over again. 

She did such a great job at this!! I was so proud at her attention to details and her listening to my directions. Wow, did she do good!

During this activity we also talked about the colors of the animals and shapes. We also talked about the animals and the sounds that they make as well as the ASL signs for them.

Another game that we played was and animal recognition game. I first showed her all of the animal photo cards and their matches.

Then, I put two cards in front of her. I told her what each animal was and gave her one matching card, asking her to place that extra card on its partner. Only I said "Vada, this is the fish. Put the fish on the fish." She showed remarkable knowledge of her animals or at least of matching -I don't know which, maybe both. Ill have to try this one again, or in a different way to see what she really knows. Either way, she did really well!

These were the last two cards left so I left them there so that there was two sitting on the desk when I asked her to place her match on its partner.

We did some sight word reading and once we went through the card stack twice we went through one more time to do the animal sounds. Vada thinks I sound pretty funny when I make a bear sound!

Our bear craft today was pasting scraps of brown construction paper onto an coloring page that I downloaded from Animals Town. It' funny that Vada doesn't mind gluing things as much as she does putting stickers on a sheet of paper but getting glue on herself isn't that big of a deal to V! She really enjoys spreading it all over and I think that's what makes it all worth it for her!

This too went on our "I Did That!" wall.