Letter B Literacy Activities

This week in our Literacy block, we have been focusing on the Beginning Consonant: the /b/ sound.

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Differentiation: We started off by differentiating between letters and numbers. We sorted through our felt words and numbers bag to make a bucket of words and another bucket of numbers. Skill: differentiate between letters and numbers.

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Word Wall: I made vocabulary cards for our word wall, where we will be adding /b/ words daily. For the introduction to this activity, I asked my child to repeat the sound of /b/ after me. Say: "There are lots of words that begin with the /b/ sound. The "Bbbbig Bbbblue Bbball is Bbbbouncy." Emphasize the /b/ sound by dragging the "b's" in the previous sentence. I made accompanying pictures to help my child identify the words easily. You can also use stickers or print-out pictures. Skill: vocabulary development and sound practice.

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Writing Practice: Practice writing the letter b on paper, on white board or with chalk. It's always fun to change the median of practice to make it interesting for the little ones. Skill: writing practice using a tool (i.e. pencil, marker, chalk, etc.).

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Surprise Bag or Bucket: Fill a paper bag with b-sound objects. Before pulling out the object from the bag, have your child close their eyes and feel the object with their hands. Then have them describe what the object feels like, without looking or peeking in the bag. Use descriptive words like soft, hard, smooth, etc. Finally, the child will make a prediction about what they are holding, before pulling it out. You can play with your child or have your child play this game in a play group taking turns pulling things out of the bag. Skill: vocabulary development and prediction skills.

Letter B Bucket © Everything Family Guide

Games: Make a letter b sensory bin by adding an assortment of toys and objects. Play "I Spy" looking for objects that have the letter b sounds.
 

Sensory Writing: Fill a Ziploc bag with homemade paint. I make mine by adding a bit of flour, food color and gel Vaseline. Sometimes I add in some glitter to add an element of surprise. Seal the bag and tape it to a window. Let your child explore the paint with their fingers by making the letter b and other fun shapes :) Skill: sensory experience and writing practice.

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Vocabulary Play: Do your kids love playing ball? Here are a few vocabulary-rich and speech development ideas for playing with a ball (w/FREE PRINTABLE)

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Letter B Crafts: Make crafts inspired by the Letter B.

Letter B Themes © Everything Family Guide

Bingo Balloon Art © Everything Family Guide

Play-based learning: For this activity, we chose to play with a toy that starts with the letter B: Blocks. Blocks are fun for all ages and you always have fun playing with them. They don't require any batteries and are a great cooperative or independent learning activity. You can also add rich-vocabulary to your play experience by modeling the activity with related words. Here are some ideas to play with blocks in a fun learning way:

• Practice playing with blocks and putting them together by hand, if it is your child's first experience. Watch your child play with the blocks and follow their lead/copy their movements or sounds. You can also demonstrate putting them together using specific words to describe as you are playing. (Vocabulary: blocks, big, small, connect, together, put together.)
• For cooperative play, build a block tower together as fast you can (you can time the activity using a kid's timer app or an alarm). Keep going until all the blocks are out or until the tower topples over. If the block tower is still standing, then you can knock it down together after building it all the way. If your child is having fun, then play all over again. (Vocabulary: blocks, tower, tall, up, down, build, fall, knock it over).
• For independent play, build your own tower beside your child's tower creation. While building, model the vocabulary words through play. As you are putting the blocks together say words like 1 block, 2 blocks, 3 blocks, 4....)
• This is the best activity: build a block train, block city, block roads, block houses or buildings. This will keep you and your child busy for a while. To make it more fun, you can add figurines or soft toys to your creations. When everything is complete, then your child can walk his dog through his block creation or climb a figurine to the top of the building.
• Here are some fun ways to learn math through block play:
• Add blocks as you build and say the numbers aloud. (1 block, 2 block,...)
• You can do color patterns (such as blue, red, blue, red, blue) while stacking or building your block tower.
• Learn about size or other characteristics of blocks by stacking or building with small, large, tiny, fat, curvy, or pointy block pieces.
• Learn to add or subtract with blocks. You can put together a building of five blocks and then take away two, now count the left over blocks to know how many are left over. This is just one of the ways to add or subtract using blocks. You also count how many blocks are in your child's finished creation afterwards. Or you can assign challenges to older kids by telling them to make a shape using a certain number of blocks (i.e. Make a car with 12 block pieces).

We are having a bbbbery great week, how about you?

Annie