My "Bb" Day

The letter Bb. So much you can do.... I'm a little late posting this; I taught a few weeks ago, but I wasn't as excited about the way preschool went so I guess that's why the delay. One child was sick, so we had three for preschool today for the letter Bb, two boys and my Lucy. Here's a quick recap with random details of what we did for the letter Bb.
-Backpack (our sound bag for the day) was empty! So we went on a 'B Hunt' to fill it up. What helped us fill our backpack, but binoculars of course! The boys were super cute running around the house looking in their binoculars. They were having so much fun, it was a lesser priority to find the B's, but with a little help we found a bunch. After class, I found two more B's we never found, lol.



-Bb Hidden Puzzle. I had cut up newspaper in different shapes and arranged it on poster board, then the kids had to pull off all the pieces that had the little letter 'b' on it, leaving behind all the big B's; which revealed a hidden puzzle of a butterfly, balloon, and big and little Bb. I thought this might be over their head- and it was a little bit for Lucy, but they actually did it all quite well.
-The Big Ball Challenge. I had a bag of balls of varying sizes and had two kids each pick one ball and had a kind of face off where I held up the balls at the same height and they had to see which ball bounced highest. Then the winner got to stay up. The next child picked a new ball and tried to get the highest bounce against the winner. I was a little surprised how organized the kids were and made sure every ball was tested- the little pink superball won out overall.

-Walked on a 'balance beam'. It actually was just a piece of board that I had borrowed from someone off of Freecycle. It kind of was a lot of work because I sanded it down for the kids to walk on, but it was worth it I think.
-Bounced on the trampoline. Ok, we don't really have a trampoline, just an old mattress that we call the 'trampoline' (to distinguish from jumping on beds which is a no-no). We bounced to the beat and syncopated nursery rhymes to the beat.
-Snack: Banana Bread, and we made banana milkshakes in the blender. I froze cut up pieces of banana, which made it nice in that all that was in the milkshake was milk, bananas, and a little sugar and vanilla.
-Down by the Bay. I had made up verses of this song using a bunch of b words, for example, Did you ever see a barracuda take a ship to Bermuda? or Did you ever see a bee carry a bucket of broccoli?
-Made books. I talked about binding books, pages and the cover. I had made up pictures for the Down by the Bay song and printed little books for each to put together. The stapler (our binding) broke before we finished making the books though, so it was kind of a half done project. I had the kids draw their cover picture. Their homework was to cut out pictures of B things from magazines/newspaper and glue them also on the backs of the pages.
-Three Billy Goats Gruff. We read the book and then acted it out. The book introduces little, bigger, and biggest. I had paper plate goat masks for the kids, and then dress up clothes for the troll, which I ended up being. It turns out I was way too ugly and mean, because I scared one little boy half to death! Yep, made him cry! How bad was that?! But it was fun using our 'balance beam' and turning it into a bridge that we set up on to the couch and the kids went trip trap over the 'bridge'.
-We also read the book, Bubble Gum Bubble Gum, very fun book. Lucy won't stop reading it!
-Read Brown Bear, Brown Bear. I tried to play a game that goes along with the song. We have a flashlight in the shape of a brown bear that makes a little "growl" when you turn it on. We used the flashlight to point to different things that started with the letter B, while singing the song. One boy said he was scared of the growling flashlight. Man, I was really torturing these kids! They were ready to move onto the next activity quick.
-Blew bubbles outside.
I don't know if I was rushing the beginning but I found myself slowing way down the second half because we were moving so quickly. The fact that the kids were ready to move on from each activity so fast says something I guess. Anyway, I could have planned a little bit more, but after over planning last time I didn't think I'd need to. Goes to show you that you can never be fully prepared for teaching- it just never really goes exactly as predicted. Anyway, that's kind of how it went. I accidentally erased half the pictures too! It just wasn't the best of days that day!