Letter B - Bear Week

 These are our homeschool preschool activities for the Letter B and Bears week. Archer was 27 months. You can see our full "curriculum" post here, but we will only use some activities each week. The majority of his time is still unstructured play.

This was his desk setup. I hung some bulletin board letters (higher this week, to minimize how much he took them down to play), some B/Bear printables (from 1+1+1=1), a sign language card (from And Next Comes L) and his art from the week. The shelf had a letter construction capital and lowercase letters, a peg letter, an Alphabet Readers, a Meet the Phonics Letter Readers and a Letter B wooden train car.

This is his "Preschool Basket," for lack of a better term. It has his magnetic tracing board, his Brain Games activity book (we just talk through together), My First Brain Quest (the goal is vocabulary practice, went better this week), dry erase tracing cards, sandpaper letters and lots of books. 

I'm trying to include readers to read together, but also books about the week's letter or animal. We had My "b" Book, an Animal Antics Reader, a First Little Readers book, a blends book and a book I made about bears (free here). Other bear books included some of the Bear books by Karma Wilson (one of these is read free on Amazon Prime), Panda Bear Panda Bear What do you See?, Polar Bear Polar Bear What do you Hear?, Bear Cub readers and A Den is a Bed for a Bear.

This was his shelf set up in the playroom. I used Magnatiles to make an B on his white board and added some magnetic letters. On top I have his Alphabet Soup Can and his preschool basket.

The shelves on the left had a puzzle, a shape sorter, Where's Bear game and some balance beams (similar to these). Shelves on the right had an empty spot (not sure what was there??), math cubes, building blocks, counting bears,  magnetic pattern blocks and a basket of cars .

He is very into Number Blocks on Netflix, so these math blocks were a big hit! We practiced counting and adding different stacks together.

Pattern Block Letter (from Confessions of a Homeschooler) - He has been magnetic pattern blocks on our magnetic easel. He did it mostly himself, with some repositioning help from me.

Counting bears seemed appropriate for bear week.

Cut and Paste Phonics Hunt, so I cut the pictures into strips for us to cut apart together. He did a pretty good job of figuring out which pictures started with the "b" sound. This week he didn't want to use the glue, just wanted to stick the pictures on the letter.

Tracing lines (free to print here). He also had much more patience for his tracing cards than I would have expected.

"B" puzzles.

Alphabet sensory bin. I had some Toob Bears, cookie cutters, lacing letters, a wooden letter and a fish letter.

Lots of play dough this week. We used cookie cutters and a letter stamper (similar to these), as well as his Toob bears. I made little "caves" for the bears and he had fun putting them in. I love watching him slowly doing more imaginative play.

For some reason he HATED when I set out this play dough stamping page for him (free to print here). He just wanted to look at the page with no dough on it.

Dot magnet page on his little easel (free to print here).

Painting a B

Case sorting activity (free to print here). He mostly told me whether Bs were capital or lowercase and I put them in the correct box.

Printable bear puzzles (free to print here).

Letter Clipping Activity (free to print here). He has trouble getting the clip on, so I put it on the left and he slides it over to the correct letter.

Size sorting.

Letter maze (free to print here). He mostly "colored" each B and then we connected them all together.

Letter construction B (From Tired Need Sleep)

We started off using his see and stamp letters, but then progressed to stamping vehicles and markers. I was just happy to see him doing some "art" since he is usually resistant.

We used Magnatiles to make little houses for his Toob bears. It ended up being a huge hit and we spent hours all week (and beyond) doing it.

Baby soap and some bathtub trains made the water table more fun this week.

Letter A - Alligator Week

These are our homeschool preschool activities for the Letter A and Alligators week. Archer was 26 months. You can see our full "curriculum" post here, but we will only use some activities each week. The majority of his time is still unstructured play.

This was his desk setup. I hung some bulletin board letters (which Archer repeatedly took down to play with), some A/Alligator printables (from 1+1+1=1), a sign language card (from And Next Comes L) and his art from the week. The shelf had a letter construction capital and lowercase letters, a peg letter, an Alphabet Readers and a Meet the Phonics Letter Readers. There was a Letter A wooden train car, but that got carried somewhere else at the time of the photo.

This is his "Preschool Basket," for lack of a better term. It has his magnetic tracing board, his Brain Games activity book (we just talk through together), My First Brain Quest (not a big fan this week), dry erase tracing cards, sandpaper letters and books. I'm trying to include readers to read together, but also books about the week's letter or animal. We had My "a" Book, an Animal Antics Reader, a First Little Readers book, some Sight Words books and a book I made about alligators (free here).

This was his shelf set up in the playroom. I used Magnatiles to make an A on his white board and added some magnetic letters. On top I have an alligator toy, his Alphabet Soup Can and his preschool basket.

The shelves on the left had number tiles and alligator counting cards, a continents matching activity, an alligator pull toy and stepping domes with activity rings. Shelves on the right had a safari puzzle, Crocodile Dentist (I told him it was an alligator), a fraction cube, a super sorting pie, magnetic pattern blocks and a basket of cars (used pretty much daily, so will stay on the shelf).

Archer has really been enjoying numbers and counting lately, but he still needs help with this kind of activity. I point to the alligators and he counts and finds the number. If there are more than four or five objects, he tends to re-count some of them. (Free to print here)

Pattern Block Letter (from Confessions of a Homeschooler) - In the past I have mostly set up magnetic pattern blocks on a horizontal board. This time I tried it on our magnetic easel, and I think it was easier for him. He did most of it himself, although I did do a bit of adjusting along the way to help.

He is still pretty little to do the Cut and Paste Phonics Hunt, so I cut the pictures into strips for us to cut apart together.

Holding his capital A while helping me decide what pictures started with A. We also learned that gluing is just not really his thing.

Some serious concentration in tracing his lines (free to print here). Lately, he has been liking the Dry Erase Colored Pencils for tracing.

Coloring some As in his alphabet coloring book (you can see how I made it dry erase here).

 "A" puzzles.

Alphabet sensory bin. I had some Toob Alligators, cookie cutters, lacing letters, a wooden letter and a fish letter.

Dot Art (from Confessions of a Homeschooler).

Water Wow Safari - Once again, pretending crocodiles are alligators...

Safari Reusable Stickers

This week we played with the stepping domes by scattering one of each color and having him match the corresponding rings. The first time, everything was close together. The second time I spread things out and put some domes on furniture, making it much more challenging. Also, if I held the rings and had him come back to me to get them, he got much more physical activity!

Reading outside on a beautiful cool morning. I'm loving this aspect of homeschooling!!

A rare moment when he actually wanted to free color. Neither of my boys has been much for drawing or coloring, so I just keep presenting opportunities and crossing my fingers!