SATURDAY SCHOOL - LETTER B

For our new school week we arrived to class as normal, sat down and got our pencil case and book ready then sang our school song:

It's a brand new day
So come on and play
In the world that's waiting for you
We're about to begin
So come on in
There's so much to do at school
You can do anything if you try
With friends like Mummy by your side
There's a new adventure in everything we do
We'll all be together
And you can come too
When gg goes to school
Anything can happen
When gg goes to school

I told gg today we were going to be looking at the letter Bb this week and if she knew what the letter Bb looked liked, and if she could find it on her alphabet puzzle. She found it straight away because that is the first letter of her name. We have tried teaching gg how to spell it since she could hold a pen. She always remembers to write Bb when we say to write an 8 with a line. This technique of describing how to draw the letter has helped gg learn to write quite a few letters, like for the letter Tt we tell her line hat and for Ii we say line hat kolo (which is bottom in Greek).

I opened her book up to a new page and wrote the date at the top. I asked gg what the numbers were then started writing the letter B first in capitals for her to copy and then in lower case b to copy. After about 10 minutes of drawing the letter Bb I asked gg "do you want to sing the Bb song with me?" She said "yeah let's sing it together mummy". gg hasn't heard the song before because I only made it up the day before and haven't yet told her but she gets full marks for enthusiasm (",)

If you want to see our school schedule in more detail check out our 'Saturday school - How Easy Is It To Learn Another Language' post.

Letter Bb song

B is for bird up in the sky
B is for beautiful butterfly
Butterfly o butterfly
Flying in the butter sky
Flying next to the birdys high
Beautiful birds and butterflies

She loved it because part of the song is from an episode from 'My friends tigger and pooh'. I then said to her "lets learn bird and butterfly in Greek Ghana" (we say Ghana rather then Ghanaian because that is what she likes to call it even when we correct her).

Bird = poo lee (Πουλί) in Greek
Bird = lo florn in Ghanaian
Butterfly = petalouda (πεταλουδα) in Greek
Butterfly = don't know in Ghanaian

For the rest of the week we went on outdoor activities and did activities at home that encourage learning the letter Bb.

Outdoor Trips:

• I told gg we were going to go to the pet shop and she had to tell me what birds she could see, as always she was very excited. When we got there she was drawn straight away to the parrot and started saying to it "who's a pretty parrot" she got this from an episode of peppa pig lol. She stood there for 10 minutes intrigued at this parrot as it kept looking at her non-stop. I then said to gg "shall we go and see if we can see any other birds?" She was a bit hesitant but soon forgot about the parrot when she saw the reptiles. She started calling them dinosaurs and went right up close to them when all of a sudden one jumped on to the glass right in front of her face. She was a bit frightened but I distracted her by showing her all the tropical fish and then the bird section. I asked her if she could see the little yellow bird? and then told her "I used to have one when I was little he was called pertoy" (don't laugh at the name I was only little lol) and then I showed her the budgies and said "I also used to have 2 of them too. When we go home I'll show you some pictures". "Ok mummy" she said, "can I have a pertoy too mummy to be like you please?" I said "we'll see lets talk to daddy when we get home". Then off she skipped back to the parrot. The owner of the shop saw how fascinated gg was with the parrot and took him out and let her stroke him. gg couldn't stop smiling. She then asked the man "what about them can I touch one please?" pointing at the iguanas. I was hoping that he wouldn't, but he did and gg touched them with out any fear. After about an hour in the pet shop we left, and on our way to the car gg said to me "I don't want a pertoy mummy I want a parrot instead. I tell daddy when he get home". (",)
• This week was cold and wet but when I saw the weather was going to be dry I took gg to the park so we could play in the sandpit and use her bucket to make sand castles. Before we went out we got her bucket spade and accessories ready and wrapped up warm and headed to the park. On our way there I asked gg "what do you put in a bucket?" She responded "Me, Stuff, A, T, Newspapers Bottles, Watering Cans, Harry puts dinos in bucket (she loves harry and his bucket full of dinosaurs) I then asked her what do you do with a bucket when you are at the beach? She said make sandcastles. As we were filling up her bucket I asked her "do you know what letter bucket begins with?" she said "I don't know.". So I told her lets sing our Bb. We sang it together 3 times then I asked her again "do you know what letter bucket begins with?" "uumm" she replied. "Ok let me cut the word in half for you baaa-kit, baa, baa, baa-kit" I said. Baa, baa, butterfly sounds like baa, baa, baa-kit and what does butterfly begin with?" I asked. "B" gg replied. "So what does baa, baa, baa-kit begin with?" I asked and this time so proud of herself and jumping up and down shouted out "B B B" (",).

Indoor Activities:
When we got home from the park I asked gg to draw me a bucket and then I wrote bucket down for her to copy it a few times. I like to make the whole day revolve around a specific thing or two, because this helps gg associate lots of different things to the thing we are learning. She also learns it's uses and remembers what I am trying to teach her because with the fun activities the same thing is repeated.

• I wanted to do an activity that involved butterflies and really wanted to get her a 'Butterfly Pavilion' which is a butterfly kit that involves looking after the caterpillars sent to you and you watch them grow a cocoon around themselves then turn into butterflies which you then release into the wild. I went to purchase it but there was a 6 week wait for it to be delivered so that idea has had to be postponed. I was gutted gg would of loved it so much. We will still do it when it arrives, hopefully we'll be on the letter Ii and we can refer to it as an insect. With my butterfly life cycle on hold I had to think of something else that involves butterflies, then I remembered I bought a butterfly cookie cutter for gg's Tinkerbell themed party and haven't used it since. So we set off into the kitchen and made our biscuit dough together, then we rolled out our dough and gg cut lots of butterflies. After we baked them and they had cooled I put some green and red icing in some bowls and let gg have a swell time decorating all her butterflies and most of the kitchen (",) Whilst gg was decorating each one I asked her what letter does butterfly begin with? how do you say butterfly in Greek? she answered correctly then I said to gg lets give all the butterflies names she said ok mummy. So I said which one is called butterfly? which one is called Bb for butterfly which one is petalouda she pointed at each one she wanted to name and when her daddy came home she named them all to him and pointed at the same ones she did earlier. I know they say kids have great memories but gg always surprises her daddy and myself with her great memory (",)

• When I was younger my aunt and uncle got me a folder on all different animals with an in-depth description on how they live what they eat their habitat etc... I thought this would be a fun way for me to teach gg about different kinds of birds. We looked at the different birds in the book and I explained a little about each one turning it into a little story which has been beneficial very beneficial for her in remembering a little of their characteristics. Here's an example of one of my made up stories:

"There once was a woodpecker who had a sharp pointy beak that kept making knock knock knocking noises on a tree and woke up the wise old owl. The wise old owl shouted at the woodpecker to stop making all the knocking sounds because he was trying to sleep. The woodpecker said why are you sleeping when it is day time? You are suppose to sleep at night. The wise old owl replied haven't you heard about us owls we don't sleep at night we sleep in the day that is why we have big eyes so we can see better at night..........."

Now if you ask gg what does a wood pecker do? She'll answer by saying " A woodpecker has a beak coz it's nose and mouth join together and it goes knock knock knock on wood and makes hole"
What is a flamingo? " A flamingo is pink and when I'm bigger I'm going to be a flamingo" lol
What is an owl? " An owl has big eyes so he can see in the dark and goes tweet toot tweet toot"
"A penguin lives in snow igloo and swims in sea to get fish to eat and a humming bird sings"
When it came to chickens I showed gg some you tube videos on the life cycle of a chicken which she enjoyed and thought the chicken with the red hat was hilarious (the cockerel). I explained to her that if a chicken has a red hat on then he is a boy and says cock a doodle doo and if it hasn't got a red hat on his head then the chicken is a girl and girl chickens lay eggs and says Bwwaaaaaaaaaaaakkkkk buk buk bwwaaaaaaaaaaaakkkkk. She kept saying "the chicken eat worms bisgusting (disgusting) urgh".

• We then made a life cycle of a hen/chicken art work by cutting out a circle and dividing the circle into 3 equal sections. In the first section gg made a nest out of strips of brown paper, stuck them down and drew some eggs in the middle. In the second section we made a worm out of two pieces of card folded over each other like a concertina and stuck one end down for a 3d effect, then we got 2 pieces of yellow card and stuck them down to make a chick and gg drew on his face. In the third section gg made a bigger chicken and added some green strips. I can't remember what they are lol shame on me because I gave them to her and told her to stick them down hehehehehe (",) 

• When gg's daddy came home gg and I did a little chicken life cycle play for him this is how it went:

We pretended to be a hen

We laid an egg in our nest

We pretended to be a chick breaking out of the egg

We were a chick eating worms

We grew from a chick into a hen

We were a hen again laying an egg
gg loved this and did about 10 re-runs of it making her daddy participate too lol. gg loved it so much that anyone who came over to our house or we went over to someones house she wanted to show them her chicken life cycle play (",).

• At the end of the week gg and I went on photoshop and she typed up her Bb song with my help and she chose the pictures she wanted to put on her card too that began with the letter Bb. We then went and printed the card out at the photo shop and gg know has it as her own Bb learning card.