Letter B

Since Izzie is practicing her "B" sounds this week, I decided to have her do some activities with buttons. First, I made a letter B for her and had her place buttons on it, while trying to say "button" each time (I need to add a button picture to the felt board).


Then, she sorted buttons by color. She gathered up all the buttons of the same color at the same time.
Finally, she organized the buttons by size (big and small) in different bowls.

Letter B

Izzie has a speech delay and has been in Speech Therapy for the last year. She has made some progress, but still isn't at age-level. I've been trying several different techniques with her and she seems to like the "flashcards" the best. However, she does get a little overwhelmed with the flashcards since there are several different sounds at one time, so I decided to focus on one letter each week. This week, we are going to focus on the Letter "B". Izzie has the most success with the letter B, so I thought this would be a good place to start. I printed off simple everyday picture cards and few more challenging ones for her to practice. Each day, we'll spend about 30 minutes repeating/attempting to repeat the different words. I placed the pictures on the felt board, so she has access to them throughout the day. She has been at the felt board several times today by herself...organizing the pictures and even pointing and identifying several of the pictures with words!!

Letter "B" Words Include:

• bow
• bus
• bone
• bye
• birthday
  
• bread
• boy
  
• bee
• baby
• brown
• big
  
• bed
• bat
• broken
• bunny
  
• bug
• blanket
• butterfly
• bean
• black
• bubbles
• book
• ball
• banana
• bear
• balloons
• bath
• bird
• boat
• blocks
• bike
• boot
• bowl
• boo boo
  

Tot School: Brown Bear, Brown Bear

This week we read the book, Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? by Bill Martin Jr/Eric Carle. This is one of Izzie's favorite books...she can read it over and over again! I created another Tot Book to go with this book. Each day, we spent time working with the activities in the Tot Book.

Unfortunately, it rained most of the week, so we had to do most of our activities inside. We built a bear cave under our dining room table where we read "bear" books.

We had a bear hunt in the woods of our living room...be careful, I see a bear!

Izzie painted a Red Bird by using a feather. She had never painted using a feather and thought it was very silly, while laughing as she painted.

I then helped Izzie make a pair of binoculars out of toilet paper holders. We covered the toilet paper holders in red paper and then I gave her stickers to decorate the binoculars. She only wanted one sticker. I had planned on taking her outside for a nature walk and bird watching with her new "binoculars", but the weather was cold and rainy. However, we did slip out after dinner on the deck to get a glimpse of the birds in the backyard.

Izzie also pretended to be a bird by eating worms with her little beak! I had also planned on doing this activity in the sandbox in the backyard.

Izzie painted a duck picture with her rubber ducks.

I had planned on taking Izzie to the duck pond to see and feed the ducks. However, the weather did not permit this, so instead we made our own duck pond in the kitchen sink with a little blue food coloring and Izzie's rubber ducks.

I had Izzie practice her scissor skills. She wasn't interested in using the scissors, but enjoyed tearing the paper. She created the blue horse from the book.

We blew bubbles...

And played with a blue balloon...

And played in the backyard.

For more inspiring Tot School ideas, please click here.

Brown Bear Brown Bear Theme Week Day 4

Today, we continued to work with the Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See Tot Book. Afterward, I had Izzie practice her scissor skills. She wasn't interested in using the scissors, but enjoyed tearing the paper. She created the blue horse from the book.

We blew bubbles...

And played with a blue balloon...

And played in the backyard.

Brown Bear Brown Bear Theme Week Day 3

Today after we worked with Izzie's Brown Bear, Brown Bear Tot Book, I had her paint a duck picture with her rubber ducks.

I had planned on taking Izzie to the duck pond to see and feed the ducks. However, the weather did not permit this, so instead we made our own duck pond in the kitchen sink with a little blue food coloring and Izzie's rubber ducks.


Izzie's favorite part was making her hands turn blue under the water. She was amazed that when she took her hands out of the water that they were no longer blue.

Brown Bear Brown Bear Theme Week Day 2

After we worked with the Brown Bear, Brown Bear Tot Book, Izzie painted a Red Bird by using a feather. She had never painted using a feather and thought it was very silly, while laughing as she painted.
I then helped Izzie make a pair of binoculars out of toilet paper holders. We covered the toilet paper holders in red paper and then I gave her stickers to decorate the binoculars. She only wanted one sticker. I had planned on taking her outside for a nature walk and bird watching with her new "binoculars", but the weather was cold and rainy. However, we did slip out after dinner on the deck to get a glimpse of the birds in the backyard.

Izzie also pretended to be a bird by eating worms with her little beak!

I had also planned on doing this activity in the sandbox in the backyard. I found the pack of gummy worms in Toy section of Wal-mart for 88 cents and the little green tweezers (2 pack) were bought at Michael's for $1.00.

Brown Bear Brown Bear Theme Week Day 1

Today, after we read Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?, we worked with Izzie's Tot Book. Her favorite activities in the Tot Book are "Bear Sequencing" and "Count With Me". We also made a bear cave under the dining room table. We gathered up all of her bear books and read and read under the table...oops, I mean bear cave!

We also ate our lunch in the bear cave...

We had a bear hunt in the woods of our living room...be careful, I see a bear!

Izzie gathered up all the bears and took them to her bear cave.

Izzie also painted her Brown Bear.

Brown Bear Brown Bear Theme Week

This week we are reading the book, Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? by Bill Martin Jr/Eric Carle. This is one of Izzie's favorite books...she can read it over and over again! I created another Tot Book to go with this book. I found the template here. I did add a few things and changed a few things just to customize it for Izzie. Here are the individual items from left to right in the Tot Book.

Izzie is really enjoying playing with...

"Heads and Tails"

"Bear Sequencing", and

"Count With Me". These templates can be found here.

The "Coloring Animals" templates are here. I wanted Izzie to be able to reuse the coloring animals, so I laminated them...now she can use her washable markers/crayons on them more than once! Izzie didn't want to color and insisted on reading the book again. So, to make the book more interactive, I placed her color-coded clothespins and the "Coloring Animals" cards on the ground. While I read the book, Izzie would find the animal and match the correct color clothespin to the animal. She really enjoys matching colors! However, the template does not have a card for the white dog. I found a picture of the white dog here and just created my own coloring card using Word.

"Looking At Me Cards" can be found here.

I found this adorable Bingo Game Cards and pieces here.

In addition, I included lacing cards for each animal, which I found here. I am in the process of finding various color yarn or shoe laces for the lacing cards. I would like Izzie to be able to match the yarn/lace with the correct color lacing card.

I also included a Concentration game that I found here. Izzie is still a little too young to truly play concentration, so instead she has fun matching the animal pieces.

I found this Shadow Matching Game here and turned it into a file folder game. Izzie really enjoyed playing it...again, matching is one of her favorite activities.

Muffin Tin Monday Goes AWOL

This week's Muffin Tin Monday theme is "AWOL". We were challenged to eat our Muffin Tin meal somewhere different. Today's learning theme is "bears", so Izzie and I made a bear cave under our dining room table...a perfect place to eat her Muffin Tin meal.



Top: Dry fruit (cranberries, golden raisins, blueberries, and tart red cherries), peanut butter bear sandwich, and a stick of cheese. Bottom: Goldfish, pretzels with a few vanilla yogurt raisins (bird's nest with eggs), and frozen blueberries with a strawberry.

To see more great Muffin Tin Monday ideas, please click here.

Tot School: Chicka Chicka

I just recently found this site and love the concept. This is our first week participating in Tot School, so I decided to do a Chicka Chicka Boom theme for the week. We read Chicka Chicka Boom Boom and Chicka Chicka 123 throughout the week. Our activities involved the alphabet and counting to 5.

I created the Chicka Chicka Boom Boom Tot Book. I found the template at 1+1+1= 1. I did add a few more items to customize it for my daughter. I had Izzie work with the Tot Book everyday. Her favorite activity was matching the clothespins to the correct color Coconut Tree.

Izzie made a hand print coconut tree.

I laminated the tree and placed it on the refrigerator. While I read Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, Izzie placed the alphabet magnets on her coconut tree. She did really well identifying the letters.

Izzie is having a hard time matching up capital and lower-case letters; therefore, I made her a flashcard set. I found the flashcards here and I laminated them, then cut them in half, so now she can use it as a game to match up the capital and lower-case letters.

Izzie worked her wooden alphabet puzzle. She can work this puzzle very quickly, but I wanted her to really identify the letters. Therefore, I would ask, "Izzie, where is the letter M?" and she would find the letter that I asked for...she identified all the letters correctly!

We also worked on the "Alphabet Song". There are several cute ABC songs on YouTube. This was Izzie's favorite.

I found this idea here. To reinforce letter identification, Izzie looked through magazines to find each letter of the alphabet. I then cut out the letters for her and she glued the letters on her coconut tree that she had colored.

To reinforce number identification and counting skills, we did several activities.

I found this idea here. Izzie had to put the correct number of stickers in each square on the dots. She of course had to match the sticker color to the correct dot color too! She enjoyed counting the stickers over and over in each square. She was a little confuse with the zero concept.

Izzie also worked with her self-correcting number puzzle (bought at Wal-mart for $4). I focused on numbers 1-5, but the puzzle goes to number 25.

Izzie also worked her wooden number puzzle, which she can work very fast, but I wanted her to really focus and identify the numbers when asked. I would ask, "Izzie where is number 3?" and she would find the number 3. She was able to identify all the numbers correctly and can hold up the correct number of fingers for 1-5. She hasn't gotten the concept of using two hands for numbers.

Chicka Chicka treat, which I found the idea here. However, instead of using celery, I used a banana. Izzie loved her treat!

We also played in backyard with a coconut. Izzie didn't care for the texture of the shell, but had a great time tossing the coconut like a ball and shaking it to hear the milk.

We then cracked the coconut opened and ate it...

I made a coconut tree out of foam, so Izzie could play with it using her foam letters, while taking her bath.

In addition, Izzie watched Chicka Chicka ABC and Chicka Chicka 123 on DVD that we checked out from the library. Chicka Chicka Boom Boom can also be watched on YouTube.

For more inspiring Tot School ideas, please click here.