letters "b" and "d" and bears

This morning we started the day off with these alphabet puzzles.  I have a variety of them so that each one of the kids has a different color and either upper case or lower case.  When one finishes with his or hers, they trade and try it all over again.  One of the children had a good time singing the alphabet song along with his puzzle and the others chimed in with him so they were able to put the letters in order.

 I put a box of colored math bears on the table and we graphed how many letter "b" we could get.  When that activity was complete, I had the children put a variety of bears in a row.  For instance, Joey place two red and one green bear in your row, or one yellow and one blue, etc.  Some put them just as I said, another put all the greens together, and yet another mixed them as he wanted  After all the bears were lined up, I then had them put them back into the box; this time all the greens, then all the yellows, etc.  We counted how many each had and who had the most of each color or the most of all  This was a good activity in many ways

 At snack time, we decided we needed to get more food for the humming birds, so I put a 2 cup measure of boiling water on the table, and had them put the sugar in the cup  One of the kids stirred the water and sugar to see what would happen.

 To their surprise, the sugar dissolved and we soon had the clear sugar water for the feeder

 The boys needed an activity and bounced around the island to burn off some energy

 Then we returned to build with the colored "Blocks", making castles and forts for our soldiers and ninjas

 They made towers with these math blocks

 Back to the table for show and tell--H  showed us his light, puzzle and skate board

 While we had other activites, the water cooled for our feeder and we were able to put it outside for our bird friends

We had a maze getting the bear and his balloons to the birthday party.  We had to try a couple of times so we would not cross the lines, but we all finished
And, we completed a paper finding out how many "b"s were read from the cards drawn from the pile.  AND how many "d"s.  We learned how to make letter "b" with our left hand by making a circle with our thumb and pointing finger and sticking the other three fingers straight up.  Then with our right hand we made the "d".  We put them over our eyes and had little glasses--fun!  These two letters are often confused.  Hope it helped them distinguish between the two

 We read This book where it repeated these four words over and over so the kids could chime along

 And the book of the week featuring letter "B"

Another fun day learning, playing and enjoying each other