blueberries for Sal- bears and berries

This post is out of order, I guess I thought I'd already written it up.  This is from Bb week.  First, Here's my sweet class enjoying our snack outside by our pond.  We have such a nice facility and grounds.  We are really blessed in that aspect.

So, back on Bb bear day, I thought I'd hit it double with Blueberries for Sal.  It's one of those books that just makes me happy to read it.  It's a little longer than some of the books we typically read.  I think the kids need that. 

Before reading, we looked at some real photos of bears.  I love using Lou's Animal Babies magazines in class.  The photos are cute and clear.  He's ready to upgrade to the older magazine in the series, but I'll miss this one.

After reading the story, we hunted the room for B and b on blueberries. They were laid out around the room.   I had a few other letters on blueberries too, but we only wanted B and b berries.  They each were to find one capital and one lower case and put them in the bucket. 

Then we used the elements of the story to talk about some directional words.  I made up a little 'book' with really large sheets of paper.  Each had a sentence with a directional word that told us where to place the baby bear.   I read the sentence and the kids helped place the little cub in the right spot.  We glued him in his correct spot.  This book is based on an idea presented at Homeschool Creations.

We had asked the kids to bring in a stuffed bear to class.  Later in the day, they introduced their bear.  We made a little class book with these.  I took a picture of them with their bear at some point in the morning.  When they introduced their bear, I asked them to say, " This is my bear, ______.  We like to ___________.   I filled in the pages as they shared. 

At the end of the day, we used these little teddy bears to 'pick' or cover up the B and b blueberries and not the other berries.

These are some activities I had out for the friends to work on when they had extra time:  This sheet has a number and then a larger blank spot for dot markers or for blueberry pom poms.  The 1-5 page came from Growing Kinders , the 6-10 page is one I made based on that.   

At home, Lou did his with a blue dot marker and enjoyed it. 

I don't think I ended up taking this addition activity in, by used it with Lou at home.  We used number sentences and little berry cutouts to solve them.  The bucket and pieces are available here at Homeschool Creations.

He was pretty impressed with himself for solving addition problems just like Bee. 

The craft the kiddos made was to decorate a bear cutout with buttons and then count up the buttons.  The number gets written on a bow tie.    This craft would have lent itself nicely to the book Corduroy, but I didn't think of that until I saw it in person. 

Can I just say again, that I love the internet.  I love sharing and getting ideas from everywhere in just moments worth or searching.  I am not sure how I taught before it was a resource like it is now!  Here's a side note:  When hubby and I were married 12 years ago, we didn't have a digital camera.  My mom had one at work and we talked about using it, but really.... what were we going to do with digital photos?   Why would you want those?   I also said several years ago, that someday they would make a phone and camera in one.  Perhaps it would have a calculator too! Wouldn't that be amazing? Good grief, look at what phones can do... anyway... I think I'll write in our thankful journal tomorrow that I'm thankful for the internet.