The Letter B

B is for Boo!

This is my favorite book for the Halloween season, ever. I love it and every one of my kids has loved it. I've done this activity once before, but we did it again and it was a hit.

 I like acting out each part as we read this book together and your kids can help with the sounds that each part of the (spoiler-alert!) scarecrow makes. My two year old was so nervous by the time that jack-o-lantern said, "BOO!" I knew that was the word that we needed to run with for the letter B.

 Every Fall, I add a bit to my collection of Halloween crafts and I happened to have a bunch of foam pumpkins left over with sticker faces that make them into jack-o-lanterns. You could use construction paper, felt, or even have your child paint faces onto a paper plate pumpkin to make their own jack-o-lantern. The possibilities are overwhelming.

 I let my little ones decorate as many pumpkins as they wanted and we traced some hands because someday I will burst into tears when I open my Halloween bin and see those tiny fingers.

 We talked about the story and decided that we needed to go find a pumpkin head for our own scarecrow we had made out of Edison's clothes, pronto. He currently looked like a lifeless toddler-sized body laying on our front stairs. 

We went on a field trip for Joy School that same day to an elk farm in the valley, which happened to have a self-serve pumpkin farm close by. That's when I realized that I had no cash and had to take all of my children into a local grocery store, by myself. Then back to the pumpkin farm. Then back to the grocery store where they actually had better prices on pumpkins.

But that's another story.

 Gosh, I'm lucky.

 But we did find just the right sized-head for our own scare-crow and Charlotte drew on a face that seemed to shout, 

"BOO!"

"B is for Bats"

The next day, my older girls didn't have school so we kept the ball rolling with our Letter of the Week and did "B is for Bats."

 This idea came from a cute blog I recently found called Crafty Morning.

I like it because it's an activity that can work for a variety of ages.

First, I printed off a few of the templates provided by Crafty Morning, HERE.

Then I had the able-scissor-handed kids (did I say that right?), cut them out. 

As modeled so brightly by Charlotte here.

Tape the bats onto white or black paper, depending on the color of paints you want to use.

I gave each kid a paper plate with paint on it and a pencil with an eraser for the dots.

Dip the end of your pencil into the paint and outline the bat first, then move outward, keeping the dots heavy around the bats so they show up when you remove them after the paint dries.

Knowing my personality, I would have never guessed that making a big crafty mess on my table with a bunch of kids (we had a few extras) would be my thing. 

But this picture makes me so happy.

 Even my two year old enjoyed this activity for about 30 minutes. I gave him a paintbrush and he later added some of his sister's discarded bat stencils.

I always try to drive it home with one last refresher before we move on. Today we read some more "B" books from the library and practiced writing the letter B on paper.

I had some bug stickers that we used to cover the B, reiterating it's shape.

 

Here are some more books that help teach this letter:

The Letter A

Here we go! Here are some Letter A activities that we've been working on. First, we did "A is for Ants." I went to our library and found some books on ants and ant colonies. Our librarians are incredible, people. Do you know your local librarians? I think they are such fantastic resources and so willing to help out. Mine even printed out information from the internet on how to make your own ant farm! I haven't attempted that yet, but I'd like to try something like this.

I found this idea to make ants with your fingerprints in black paint, crawling over a hill that is the letter A. And for some reason, I only took this one, very unhelpful picture. I had some extra kids over that day:

But they ended up looking something like this:

 Moments of Mommyhood

While they crafted, I read the books about ants and we talked about it a bit. I also played the video clip on YouTube for the Letter A from Sesame Street. We love these videos. 

And that was all we did that week.

Then we went to Kauai. Without our children.

A different kind of activity time.

 

 

It was incredible. Need I say more?

Then we came home. 

*Sigh.

And we started back in with A is for Alligators! My kids have LOVED talking about alligators. I don't know why. Edison might really believe there is one living under his bed. 

Thanks to this great book:

There's an Alligator Under My Bed

I cut out giant letter A's out of green paper and lots of teeth out of white paper.

 Then I cut out the shape of the eyes (bottom of above pic) where we glued googly eyes. Nice and simple people; do you see a theme here? (Source for this idea found here.)

 Ed glued the teeth all over the A and I was just happy he was participating!

And not eating the glue stick.

 The next day, it was raining so I decided to do some more activities with our alligators. I hid the two that they made in different spots and we played this game I threw together using things I had around the house.

 My kids love the song "Five Little Monkeys" where they tease Mr. Alligator. I had this tree my oldest daughter made for a family night activity, so I put five pom-pons in the tree, representing monkeys. This activity is not meant to impress anyone.

Had I prepared a little more, I could have printed out five pictures of actual monkeys and colored them, or laminated them.

I like the pom-poms.

 I colored a clothes-pin with a green marker and we sang our song and they got to SNATCH that monkey right out of that tree! They loved it.

Then I got really quiet and told them that there were two REAL alligators hiding in our house.

And they believed me.

'Cause I'm the mom and I hold that much power.

They searched around until they found their alligators from the day before. Then they made those alligators eat the pom-pom monkeys out of the tree and we sang the song a few more times.

(Do you like the mixed-matched half-gone pajamas we have on here??)

That afternoon, my Eloise was bored and STILL wanted more alligators in our house, so we made a very simple craft using a paper plate, green paint, white paper teeth, and googly eyes. She did most of it on her own ("More teeth please mom!).

Run with it! Email me your crafts. I'll share them and praise you for your hard work.

Know you're doing a good job, whatever you're doing with your kids.

These are just ideas if you need them.

Don't stress.

You're amazing.