'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:

That's What I'll Wear at Noon: Day Three of Jesse Bear

Today we began with some of Vada's journaling or lap book pages, "Rhyming Words", these were part of the Jesse Bear kit that was downloaded from Homeschool Share.com. Rhyming is a new learning concept for Vada and one that is going to take a long time (I believe) for her to fully get the concept of but then again, she is only three and a half and in my mind it seems quite young for this stuff. We worked on it nonetheless and she was very interested. I made it into a kind of game by turning all of the pictures upside down and having her flip them over one by one and as she found cards that went together I would verbally and physically match them up, all the while making a big deal about why and how they went with each other.

Once we made a match, I would hand each card back to Vada, one by one and then ask her to put them together, then into the Jesse Bear pocket.

After we worked on her lapbook rhyming activity cards we went on to a rhyming word match sheet  from our Homeschool Creations Jesse Bear packet.

Her and I together drew the lines connecting the rhyming photos and then I gave her some free time to practice making lines on her own. She made some really impressive lines today!

Look how long those strokes are! I'm so pleased with how much improvement she has made in such little time.

We worked on primary color matching with these "color bears", a set that I made from a set that I purchased from a local teachers store in our area but you can also order yours here.

Vada did an amazing job. I could tell that she was bored however but as I was taking everything out of the bag and handing each piece to her I was watching what she was doing with the pieces and she was sorting them without being asked! Then, when it came to actually doing it together, she had practically already done it and had to be persuaded to do it again but she did.

Since we were already working on colors recognition I thought it was a good time to get out the math bears and work on patterns or sequencing. Vada and I have done this several times and she knows what I want her to do when it comes to these certain cards and these bears, she may not always do a perfect job but today I was so excited when she put the blue bear onto the correct blue picture and then the red bear into the empty box. In fact, while it doesn't look like it, she had all of these bears sitting in the correct placement only when she put that last blue bear onto the card her little hand pushed the others away from their spots. 

We ended up spending fifteen to twenty minutes on the patterns. She was able to do the red and blue patterns twice and completed the red and green pattern once. She is not able to do this activity on her own yet. I do need to remind her that "the blue bears go onto the blue bears" and the "red bears need to go onto the red bears" but with my encouragement and patience she is able to complete a full pattern. I am hopeful that by the end of this school year she will have a much stronger concept of patterns.

We also did some sight word reading from our book with these cards that also came in the Homeschool creations kit.

After spending two days focusing on the letter 'A' from Letter of the Week (a Confessions of a Homeschooler product), Vada and I moved onto the letter 'B'. Remember, we already did the letters 'A-D' last Spring, therefore we are only spending a couple of days on those specific letters before we move onto new letters that we will actually be spending an entire week on again.

We worked on tracing the letter 'B', my hand over Vada's and then she got her free time.

We played Big 'B', Little 'b', a letter upper and lowercase letter recognition game.

We took some time to play with power magnets and used them on a "B is for Butterfly" worksheet.

Vada couldn't seem to see past her thumb splints, so we tried this activity without them and she actually did a lot better.

Next we opened a can of Letter B Alphabet Soup. Vada love's these cans! She is always SO interested in whats inside each one.

Believe it or not, we had a long morning and Vada ended up getting a little restless. She was happy to be finished, I think.

For lunch, I made a meal just like the one from our weeks Jesse Bear book, (except I had an extra compartment in her muffin pan, so I added a little trail mix.)

"celery crunch and sprouts in a bunch..."

"carrot's and pea's, and a little more please..." 

"Rice in my hair, that's what I'll wear at noon."