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Saturday, April 30, 2011

School Time Week 31: B Lessons: Beans, Butterflies, Bees, Bears and more

And what a week it was.  B lessons here, B lessons there.  B sure has a lot of opportunities for lessons. This is the first time I have broken the week up into specific days.  Let me explain.  We started out our week with "Bean Day."
They hunted for beans in The Great Bean Hunt again.
(wish I had a stop watch so I could time them)


Then we "planted" beans in plastic cups filled with wet paper towels.  I remember doing this when I was in elementary school.





We checked a few days later and Tabitha said the beans had "hatched."

They also sorted beans and then glued them onto their b's to make some tactile b's.  We haven't done this for a while.  But it has been hard to find things to use for some letters.


Even our muffin tin had some beans in it.
(I didn't get to post it on Monday because of our 3 day internet problems)

Green Beans
Baked Beans
Jelly Beans
Then we had:
Bananas
Grapes and BBQ chips
Butterfly bread with cream cheese





And on Tuesday the girls got to jump in the Bounce House that was purchased for play group.





Lovely Spring
We get to observe Bugs now too.
The girls have found it necessary to feed the ants in the dead stump in our back yard.  They really liked the sugar and the jelly bean.  Not so much the Cheerios or the salt.





And on Wednesday we had:


I had the girls gather all their bears (at least the ones that are not packed away).


Then I set up a bear hunt.

 This one is in a cave

 This one is by a tree on the other side of the river

 This one is by the bush on the other side of the mountain.

I used my own verses for the "Going on a Bear Hunt" chant. The girls had a bit of a problem repeating after me.

We read Baby Bear, Baby Bear, What Do You See? and Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do you See? by Bill Martin Jr and Eric Carle.
 Then we read the book Berlioz the Bear by Jan Brett.  This book has beautiful illustrations, no surprise for a Jan Brett book.  The bear orchestra is prepared to perform at the gala ball, but suddenly Berlioz's bass is making a buzzing sound.  He is so distracted he doesn't notice the hole in the road.  The wagon the orchestra members are traveling in gets stuck and the rest of the book shows increasingly larger animals trying to pull the mule up and get the wagon wheel free.  It is a small angry bee that finally gets the mule moving.
So Thursday was our "bee" day.  
We listened to Flight of the Bumblebee on YouTube.  And for our alphabet craft, we made b bees:

The girls drew on the bee's stripes.


And glued on the wings and the stinger





Then they wanted to paint.  I thought we were going to paint the stripes on, but couldn't find black paint.  So, as I had promised them we would paint, we painted butterflies.  We talked about symmetry again.





I then decided I wanted to make some bee bean bags.  So we headed down to the thrift shop to find a bright yellow shirt I could cut up.  The girls helped me trace oval shapes on the shirt.



Then they gave the bees stripes.  They learned it is not as easy to write on material as it is on paper.


Then I cut them out.

We are going to finish these bee beanbags and play a game where we throw them at different bowls, each of which contain a picture of a different kind of bee.  Then the girls have to search the room for the matching bee picture.  We are using:
bumble bee, carpenter bee, killer bee, mason bee and honey bee.



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8 comments:

  1. Another lovely set of activities!! The Butterfly "sandwich is fabulous" and I bet it was lots of fun to make. Growing a bean is awesome and SOOO exciting when you are little, will have to do one like this too and love all your bees :-)

    Thanks for linking to Kids Get Crafty!

    Maggy

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  2. Wow! that is a lot of "b" fun. Looks like a great week.

    Kim

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  3. What a super fun week! I love the bee bean bag idea. And also your muffin cups are so cute! My favorite activity was for sure the ant food one. My oldest is a true nature lover and scientist at heart and she would LOVE this activity! Going to bookmark this. :)

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  4. I remember growing bean sprouts in kindergarten, too!! I was just thinking of this the other day. I but your girls loved it!

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  5. Love that the beans "hatched" LOL

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  6. That's a great B week! Love the bear day and bear books.

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  7. The bear and bears are wonderful. Thanks for linking to Read.Explore.Learn.

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