"B" is for Brown, Blue, Bumpy, Beaver, Bear, Balloon, Balls, Bells and Brilliant!

"B" is for brilliant! We are having so much fun at our new biweekly Alphabet Play event at Absolute Dance.  Each session is a mixture of circle time with a letter of the week craft, story, and songs; and free play that we try to connect in some way with the letter that we are exploring.  

This week was all about letter "B".  As it turns out, there are a lot of words that start with "B".  Even without trying, it seemed like every sentence we spoke somehow included a "B" word. The bevy of "B" options made choosing our activities difficult.  With so many beguiling possibilities, we could have had several letter "B" sessions.  

During circle time, we discussed some common words that start with "B", like blue, brown, black, bear, bend, bounce, ball, balloon, boat, big brother (we had one, soon to be two in our group that day), baby, and of course our friend Ben!  There are all sorts of cute possibilities for letter "B" crafts, like "B" is for butterfly, and "B" is for bumblebee, but being Canadian we could not pass on the opportunity to celebrate our national animal, the beaver:

We started out by gluing brown letter "B's" onto a blue background:

We then added bumpy beige tails (made of sandpaper), brown ears, black eyes, and big teeth to our beaver buddies. I love seeing the different ways each child interprets a craft:

 ("B" is for a bashful soon-to-be big brother who is pictured with beanbags)

("B" is for big brother Ben with blue and yellow balloons)

("B" is for our beautiful British friend)

("B" is for a baby in a shirt with bows who just celebrated a birthday and is playing with a balloon).

After our craft, we played with bells, bounced balls and bounced ourselves, batted balloons, bent our knees, balanced on one leg, balanced beanbags on our heads while we walked, and burned off energy just having fun running and playing.  At the end of our brilliant afternoon of letter "B" basics, we read "Little Blue Truck Leads the Way" by Alice Schertle.  Full of onomatopoeia "B" words like  "beep", and "buzz", it was a great way to reinforce the sound that the letter B represents.

We all went home with bear stickers on our hands, and I kept the letter "B" theme going at home with a broccoli salad and a banana for lunch.  A letter "B" day would be a great day to bake too! We will be back with letter "C" soon!