'B' is for Jesse {Bear}: Day Five

Today we finally wrapped up Jesse Bear, What Will You Wear? and I am using the word "finally" loosely because this book and this row has been another enjoyable adventure!

Since we have also been working on refreshing our "Letter of the Week" week of letter 'B' we tied the two together. We started off by finishing up Vada's lapbook/journal work pages.

We worked on coloring, cutting and pasting.

We then moved onto a game called "Find the Bears!"

After the game we continued to color more things that start with the letter 'B'. Can you tell that she was thrilled?

She was totally done! You may be wondering how I knew this. Call it intuition, if you will. It may have been the pretend sleeping or snoring noises that she was making that clued me off but the final moment was when she looked me directly in the eyes and began scribbling. It. was. too. funny! It was like she was trying to be like "okay Mom, I'm doing it, but I don't want to be!" I love her sass. Love it!

Next we did a gummy bear color sorting activity. We used real candy and guess what? Guess!!, I'll wait... ... ... She didn't eat any during the whole activity and not because she didn't know what they were, she did, but because she understood we had something that we were doing with them first! Call me what you will, naive, whatever, but I know she knew it was candy (she kept saying "mmmm", like yum) and I believe that she understood that this was not the time to eat the candy. She. did. good.

After we sorted all of the bears we then resorted them on a sheet of paper by counting them out. After each color had been counted the number was then wrote underneath the pile of gummies and we went onto the next color.

Vada was rewarded for her hard work and mathematical dedication with some of very own gummy bears that I had set aside before we started this activity. She was grateful!

Next be played in the sand, just like Jesse Bear in our book!

"sand in my hands"

Our companion books this week were:

Alpha-laundry: Day Four of Jesse Bear, What Would You Wear?

I forgot that the beginning of the public school year could be SO busy! I now have a fifth grader and an eighth grader both who already have BIG plans for their ending year in their schools. Kiliegh, my fifth grader is now working as a crossing guard or "patrol" and has decided to play an instrument, the Trumpet.

 Jasmine, may or may not be in the science club again this year. It's still undecided if that group is even going to meet this year and she has "one really annoying student" who is threatening to join and that is ruining her motivation to participate in the group again. However, she is very excited about getting excepting into cheerleading this year.

 I'm excited for her as well! 

It's just funny how much has come with all of these new journey's for the girls. Kiliegh had a night of instrument try-outs and then a huge meeting for the parents and then next week they will have a district wide lesson where everyone will get together and learn the first five cords, get their instruments (if they don't already have them) and their books. Jasmine had try-outs for five nights in a row for two hours and then now meets every night for four night of those nights for practice! Whoever said cheerleading wasn't a sport, had no idea how hard these participants really worked! 

We have had sports physicals, eye exams and unpack your back pack nights times two! Then we have started up Kindermusik classes for Vada and I and in the last two weeks we have had our six month visit with Vada's PT Kim (everything is great) and monthly with her OT Christy (again, all is well). I'm hoping that now things will fall into a well rounded routine! However, because of the heat and lack of central air, school here has been canceled today and probably will be again tomorrow! Therefore, that routine that I just mentioned, is again kind of thrown off of course for a couple of more days. 

Making due with the time that we do have Vada and I fit in another fun Jesse Bear activity, "Alpha-Laundry" which was part of her journal/lapbook download from Homeschool Share. Can you believe that we spent over forty-five minutes on this? 

Instantly Vada was interested!

We actually have an "article of clothing" for each upper case and lower case letter of the alphabet but today we only used either or, which one didn't actually matter for our first time activity of alpha-laundry.

I colored the "clothes" myself but you can actually print them on colored paper to make it easier and then you could also use this activity for color matching but we have so many color matching activities that I thought that I would do it my own way.

I had Vada grab one letter at a time and with my help we would also remove the clothes pin and then she would put both into the basket. I would tell her what letter she chose and sing the letter song from the Leap Frog videos, "the 'e' says ehh, the 'e' says ehh, every letter makes a sound, the 'e' says ehh." We went through every. single. letter. singing this song and it was worth it. She loves that song and it stick in her head. I know it does because she is beginning to attempt to sing along with it and she knows how to make the sounds to many of the letters of the alphabet.

The printable's also came with some blank "clothes" and I used some to print Vada's name onto them, so that she can start to focus on recognizing her written name, which is one of her goals this school year.

We spent over forty-five minutes and didn't make it through the entire alphabet, so we have more laundry to do but for today we have made some real progress and this is staying out and is not only being a "Jesse Bear" activity!