Buttons & Bubbles

Buttons & Bubbles

Today is the first day of school here, so I though today was as good a day to start as any.

This week’s letter is B. Because I’ve never done this before, I wanted to start simple. It was simple alright, but it was also a perfect first day for Nixon and Lucy. Neither of them had every really had any real structured learning time (other than maybe an hour a week at church), so the short lesson was a great way to get them started.

Book

I wanted to use Fancy Nancy Bubbles, Bubbles, and More Bubbles, but we didn’t have it at the time, so instead I introduced them to the entire alphabet. We used the “Amazing Animal Alphabet” book that we already had. It’s been one of Lucy’s favorite books since she was barely crawling.

Flashcards

The flashcards don’t need to be anything fancy. I took a crayon and a 3×5 index card and wrote the big letter on one side and the little letter on the other side. I asked them for a code word to add to the card – something that would help us remember the sound of the letter and they both just sat there and stared at me. I was honestly hoping that one of them would give me something. I thought it would be really neat if they each gave me a different word, but I was lucky to get anything out of either of them.

We ended up using “baby.” I wrote “baby” on the same side as the little version of the letter and then attempted to get them to practice the sound and the word with me.

More stares.

It was our first day.

Song

Then we attempted a song. I’m old and I don’t remember most of the songs I learned with I was a kid, so I had to look some up. I found this one called “Bubble, Bubble, Pop!” on YouTube and used the video to teach the song to the three of us (the song part starts at 0:55, just in case it doesn’t automatically go there for you). I thought this would be the easiest and most liked part of the whole thing, but it definitely was NOT.

Nixon covered his ears and growled. Lucy just gave me Scowl Face.

Um… it was our first day… *shrug*

Activity

The activity I picked was simple. I used the bubble letters I found here and just printed two copies of the “Bb” page. I dug up some buttons I had in my craft supplies, but you could easily pick up a small container at Target, Walmart, or a local craft store. If you’re like me and rarely get out of the house, I’m sure Amazon probably has some too. You won’t need a ton of them.

This was, by far, the favorite part of the day.

It took some coaxing and some demonstration and a little bit of teasing, but once they caught the vision they were in. We got buttons in all of the bubbles but I missed the chance to get a picture before the Giant Bubble Mess of Week 1.

You’ll notice that I didn’t make them match the button color to the bubble color (that’s part of the original activity instruction). I didn’t want to ask too much on the first day, and honestly wanted to watch them to see what they would do on their own. Lucy wanted all of the big buttons and Nixon didn’t care what size, color, or shape the button was.

All Done!

The entire thing took all of about 30 minutes and then we went outside and turned on the bubble machine.

Short and simple. A little bit of learning and a lot of playing. We’ll get used to the routine and as we add more letters we’ll be spending more time during the review portion of the outline. That’s one of the things I like about this idea – it builds over time. It’s meant to get them used to learning for longer periods of time, while still giving them play time.

Leave a Reply