B Week in Review

Yesterday at church, my husband entertained Emma by writing letters on the Magnadoodle and having her name them. We discoved that she knew the entire alphabet. Once again I'm feeling both extremely proud of her and a little bit useless myself. :) But I take comfort in knowing that she only knows lowercase a and b, and she only knows the sounds for a handful of letters. So we will continue on. Also, we're having fun!

Seeing and saying the names and sounds of the letter are easy for Emma--she is a quick memorizer. And the repetition works well. Reading is also a big hit, but that is no surprise either, considering we are total bookworms at this house. The letter books are adding more variety than our current collection. Writing continues to be a bust for Emma's little hands. But she is beginning to draw some actual shapes--a circle here, a triangle there--so we will keep trying.

Cooking is probably our favorite. Not only does it yield some delicious snacks, but we're having a marvelous time mixing. Art project are hit-or-miss, probably because I haven't really done too many of them with Emma before. She really enjoyed the butterfly this week, though, perhaps because she has a pair of butterfly pajamas that are her favorite. :) Our "Do" activities seem to be a bit hit-or-miss as well, depending on what I think up. I will have to be a little bit better about brainstorming.

Goldie and the Three Bears by Diane Stanley

This book is, obviously, a retelling of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, which I've decided is a story I just don't like. Goldie is kind of a brat, and kind of demanding (to quote: "Goldie knew exactly what she liked--and exactly what she didn't.") Seriously, do I want to make my toddler even MORE picky? But I suppose at 2 she's too young to pick up the subtleties. As for being a B book, it was okay. It has less B words than one would think, especially because the bears don't show up until the final third of the book. But it was okay, and Emma seemed to enjoy reading it.

Banana Bread

Cooking continues to be a favorite activity. Emma loves to "dump it" into the bowl, after which crying with delight, "we dooed it!" (We're still working on pronouns and irregular past tense verbs. :) My husband helped out this week and even tried to get her to crack an egg, though I don't think she liked it all that much. But we all enjoyed the yummy results.

This recipe is your basic Betty Crocker version.
1 1/4 cups sugar
1/2 cup butter or stick margarine, softened
2 large eggs
1 1/2 cups mashed very ripe bananas (3 medium)
1/2 cup buttermilk
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup chopped nuts, if desired

1. Move oven rack to low position so that tops of pans will be in center of oven. Heat oven to 350. Grease bottoms of 2 eight-inch loaf pans, or 1 nine-inch loaf pan.
2. Mix sugar and butter in large bowl. Stir in eggs until well blended. Stir in bananas, buttermilk, and vanilla; beat until smooth. Stir in flour, baking soda and salt until just moistened. Stir in nuts. Divide batter evenly between pans.
3. Bake 8-inch loaves about 1 hour, or 9-inch loaf about 1 hour 15 minutes, or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool 10 minutes in pans on wire rack.
4. Loose sides of loaves from pans; remove from pans and place top side up on wire rack. Cool completely before slicing.

The Big Bug Ball by Dee Lillegard

Another random library book that turned out to be a great study of the letter B. This book tells the story of all the bugs getting together to have a ball (surprising title, eh?). The rhyming text is fun, as are the illustrations of differet types of bugs dressed in different kinds of dance garb. (Though I must admit that after several years of living in New York City, the picture of the cockroach at the buffet freaked me out some).

Butterfly

Our art project this week was to make a butterfly. I had orignially thought to stick two hearts together as wings, but to emphasize the letter, I took a 12x12 piece of cardstock, folded it in half, and drew a big letter B, with the straight edge on the fold, like so:

Then I cut out along the B with scissors, careful not to cut through the fold. Then we whippped out the crayons, and Emma colored the wings:

To finish it, I punched a hole in the top, and put in a plastic twistie-tie (like from a loaf of bread) to make the antennae. I really would have preferred pipe cleaners, but I didn't have any. I guess I will have to stock up on toddler art supplies. The finished product:

Bats at the Beach by Brian Lies

This book was a randomly chosen library book, but it proved to be a fun read and a perfect B book. Besides "bats" and "beach," which are repeated several times throughout the book, there are a lot of other B words, containing both big and little Bs. The story is fun--a nighttime beach outing for a bunch of bats--and the pictures yield a lot to talk about with your toddler. I'm thinking of adding this one to our home collection.

B is for Bath

I suppose I need to start with a disclaimer here: we take baths every couple of days at our house. It is a regular occurance, though it usually takes place without fanfare. We skip the bath toys, dump some water on her head, soap her up, dump some more water, and try to be done in ten minutes or less.

Thus for our "Do" B activity, we took an extra-special bath. We broke out the bath toys, including some new bath crayons, which were especially convenient for writing the letter B on the side of the tub.

For some reason, the Do activities seem the hardest to come up with at the time. Only after our special bath did I think of other possibilities: blowing bubbles, building with blocks, bowling.

The Wheels on the Bus

This song has been a favorite in our house for quite a while, and a few weeks ago I found a pop-up book version in the clearance setion at Borders just waiting for us to buy it. Of course it made a perfect B book. We had to read it twice--once to go through the motions while we sang the song, and a second time to actually focus on the letter B. Our particular version had several B words besides bus--babies, bell, beep, etc. A perennial favorite.

Belly Button Book! by Sandra Boynton

We are huge Sandra Boynton fans at our house, and we've had this book for quite a while. And this book is chock full of Bs. Since Emma was already familiar with the story and can recite quite a bit of it herself, we focused on finding big Bs and little Bs in the text, as well as pronunciation. ("Buh buh buh button!") This book has a lot of repetition, which makes it perfect for the alphabet project. Not to mention that it's super fun to read!