Get busy with the letter b

I hope you enjoyed lots of letter Aa activities last week - if you missed that post, see it here.  Now let's get busy with the letter Bb!  There are SO MANY great things you can do to reinforce the connection between the letter B and the sound |b|: ride bikes, blow bubbles, bathe baby dolls, bake bread and more!  There are so many in fact, that I'm going to break this week up into 2 blog posts - are you ready to get started?

Activity #1  Bake bread.  

Yum!  If you have access to a bread machine it is super easy to make bread, but even if you don't, it's worth the time!  After you get online and find a recipe that appeals to you, you and your little one will do a lot of math as you prepare your dough: measuring teaspoons and tablespoons of ingredients, counting in cups of flour, and don't forget the real life skills of scooping and pouring. I've baked bread literally hundreds of times with children as young as 2.5, and the trick is to let them help however they can.  You probably don't want to have them measure and pour cups of water - how much would make it into the dough, and how much would spill?  Some things are too heavy for little hands, and some measurements need to be relatively precise.  

What to do?  Hold their hands in yours and help them scoop teaspoons of ingredients, then let them dump it in. 

Have them rest a measuring tool on the edge of the mixing bowl, and you pour liquid ingredients into that, then they dump it in.

Count scoops out loud together.  

If you're using a bread machine, show them which button to push to start it, and hold the lid open and watch it go for a minute.

 If you're kneading by hand, share the dough with them and let them knead for as long as they can - if you're talking about the bread, the sticky feeling of the dough, how you want to eat it when it's done, they'll hold out longer - and strengthen their hands as they do!

Once you've got the bread started, consider taking a close look at a piece of bread together.  Does your child notice all the bubble holes in the bread?  That's what makes it light and fluffy to eat!  

Yeast is the ingredient that makes the bubbles, and it needs warm liquid to do it.  If you put a little yeast in some warm water in an empty bottle, add a pinch or two of sugar, then stretch a balloon over the bottle, you'll trap any gas the yeast makes. 

It will probably take about as long as baking the bread does - so it's great to do these things at the same time!

Of course the best part of baking bread is eating it (smelling it cook is a close 2nd)!  Still, make sure you save a little for the next activity.

Activity #2: Teddy bears picnic

Bread isn't the only food that starts with the letter B - there's bananas, berries, bologna, broccoli... enough to make an excellent teddy bears picnic!  I like to read the book, but you can also listen to the song on YouTube.com, and then pack your basket with food that starts with B, grab your favorite bear(s) and book(s) and head to the backyard to enjoy your picnic! 

Activity #3: Go on a Bear Hunt

I learned this song / game first from Dr Jean's song, then later found the book and story retelling by Michael Rosen, and later still the version from The Learning Station.  My favorite is the book - and seeing the author tell it is fantastic!  However you learn it, going outside and pretending to go on a bear hunt is FUN!

While you're outside for your bear hunt, take a little time for:

Activities 4, 5, 6, 7 & 8: Bounce balls, bathe baby dolls, ride bikes, blow bubbles, and observe bugs!

That's more than enough for one blog post - but come back on Wednesday for a second installment of letter Bb activities!

Baking bread, blowing bubbles, and a great big bass

Today we started working on the letter B.   All the kiddos had a turn to come up and pull something out of my big black bag of b items.  

We also did our cooking project today: we baked bread!  Everyone helped to put an ingredient in the bread machine pan.

 We climbed up on a step ladder so we could watch the machine mixing the ingredients around, and then went outside for a while.

 Today's special outside activity was blowing bubbles.  On other days this week we'll bathe the baby dolls and bounce balls, but that will be a blog post for another day!

 The bread baked during nap time, and when we got up, we could smell it!  It's a huge loaf!

 We all tasted it together - and almost everyone gave it a thumbs up. 

 The bread was still warm, so the butter melted into it, and the crust was crunchy and delicious.  I wasn't the only person who went back for third servings!

 Finally, we got to see and hear - and feel an upright bass.  My son showed us the bass and the bow, and talked to us about it's deep voice.  One of the kiddos was able to come up with the word 'vibrations' to explain how it made sound!

 The kiddos were fascinated!

 Everyone that wanted to had a turn to put their hand on the bass and to feel it vibrating.  We also put our hands on our throats while we talked, and we could feel our voices vibrating too.

Tomorrow we'll do more fun things for the letter b!

Baking Bread - an activity for the letter Bb

What could be tastier than freshly baked, warm bread, with butter melting into it?  Yum!  Engaging all their senses really helps the kiddos make connections, so we bake, smell, and best of all taste bread for the letter Bb week. Everyone washed hands, and came to the kitchen counter to help.

 Here are our ingredients.  We also needed a recipe to tell us how much of each ingredient to put in.

 

First we poured in the water.

 Next we added 3 Tablespoons of honey - yum!

  

  

We needed some butter...

 

... and oats, because it was oatmeal bread...

 ...lots of flour!

...just a little dried milk powder.  The kiddos thought that was silly - the only milk they see is liquid.

 ...and a little touch of salt.

Ms. Paula added the most important ingredient of all - yeast.  Yeast is the ingredient that makes the little bubbles in bread.  We looked at a piece that was already cooked and could see all the little bubbles in it!

 We put the bread pan into the bread machine to cook our bread, and set up an experiment with yeast.  If yeast makes bubbles, we thought maybe we could catch some in a balloon.  Ms. Paula put honey, yeast and water in a bottle, and topped it off with a balloon.  The balloon was very empty, and floppy.  We wondered if it would stay that way, or get some air in it from the yeast.

After nap, when the bread was cooked, we looked at the balloon.  Here's what it looked like!

Even better, here's what the bread looked like:

 So, was it a good cooking day?  Well, there were only a few crusts left over!