Well now that I'm almost done with "C" week I guess I should do my "B" week post, LOL.

Our main theme this week was BEARS, but we also did bubbles and buttons. Bears won out because there is an unbelievable amount of free downloads for "Brown Bear, Brown Bear" by Eric Carle.

Our books for this week;
(Rated 1-10, with 10 being the highest).

Blueberries for Sal - 9 - Fiona LOVES this book! She always laughs when everyone gets all mixed up. One thing that gets difficult is she doesn't believe that we can read this without eating blueberries ourselves. I guess its my fault for reading it to her for the first time the day before we went blueberry picking.
Going on a bear hunt - 3 - neither Fiona nor I liked this book. Fiona was bored with it, until she was terrified by the bear that was chasing the family.
Ask Mr. Bear - 7 - This story is about a little boy asking all the animals around the house what he should give his mom for her birthday, finally Mr. Bear gives him a gift idea. Her exact response was "Awwwww".
Grandma's Button Box - 8 - I liked this story. It shows several ways to sort things, and it even gives a good reason for keeping your things nice and neat.
The Button Box - 7 - I like the other book better, but this was also a good book about sorting.
Brown Bear, Brown Bear - 10 - Fiona and I both LOVE this book. Its a simple book, and very repetitive and one of the few books I have happily read everyday for months on end. Fiona first "read" this to me at just over two years old! So now this book is one we read together, with us saying the words together or switching off who's "reading". Its still loved, as evidenced by its sorry condition :) If you only get a few board books for your baby/toddler, this tops my list of suggestions.
Where is my Teddy? - 7 - I thought this was really cute and liked it, but Fiona said she was scared of the bear the first time we read it, and hasn't let me read it to her again. This is my fault being as the bear isn't scary at all, but I read this book almost right after Bear Hunt, with its scary bear. Its a cute story though so maybe we'll try again in a couple of months when we are covering bears for our winter/hibernation theme.
Brave (A Mother's Love) - 8 - cute retelling of the movie that's much more age appropriate. I wanted to take Fiona to see this in the theaters but when Colin and I previewed it at the cheap theater, it was much to violent/scary for her.
Bangalee - 9 - I really liked this Serendipity book (I have a TON of Serendipity books that I bought while still pregnant because several of my favorite picture books all were serendipity books). These are longer books, but Fiona has no problem sitting through one, and will often ask for another. So anywho, this book is about a group of animals called critters who are very messy and dirty. The critters live in filth, all except Bangalee who likes it clean. One day the critters see that the Grunk is right outside their castle. Grunks eat junk and the critters are afraid that he wont be able to tell them from the junk filling the castle. Fiona has decided that the Grunk is real, and fears he will eat all her toys. This doesn't mean she dislikes the book, she has asked for it to be read again several times. She has also asked for help cleaning her room, and has willingly cleaned simple things on her own! Have I told her the Grunk isn't real? Nope. Who in their right mind would if it got their toddler to clean!

So other then reading what did we do? Well we practiced writing the letter B again, and again, and again. We wrote on dry erase boards, copied work sheets, used chalk outside... On Tuesday I decided to leave handwriting alone for a year, Fiona however first thing Wednesday asked to do school and practice writing again. After many, many tries she finally made one B on her own. Since then she has Bs down pat. After that you'd think C would be easy. Nope.

We watched educational videos;

Leapfrog -letter factory -

SigningTime - ABC - I LOVE these videos. We own the first four, the toddler videos and for awhile before she was verbal (was there ever really such a time? I find it hard to believe.) I really believe the a good part of the total lack of tantrums we had with her was do to her vocabulary of more then 60 signs she learned from the baby signing time videos. The videos are pricey but I've found quite a few at the library so check there first :)

Bill Nye - Oceans - This was most defiantly advanced for her ( I saw it at the library and was wondering if I'd still think he was as cool as I thought he was when I was a kid - of course he was, he's Bill Nye!) But Fiona watched the video and was engrossed by it. As soon as it ended she said "I have an ocean animal! My fish! I like to watch him like a scientist to see what he does. Can we feed Fahfee so I can watch him eat?" I was really impressed by her response to the video! I know I'm her mom but I think that amount of association and vocab shows the brilliance of my three year old!

Magic School bus - bugs.

YouTube videos;

The B Song - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdfUMGlyg-c

It's the Letter B - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMgYvCwnjWI

Sesame Street: Patrick Stewart Soliloquy on B - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hA7lv1SDzno

Sesame Street: The Beetles - Letter B - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3WWrrNjGxQ

The activities and such we did included;

We did lots of button sorting.

We made blueberry muffins and butterscotch pudding.

We made "B" collages, artwork, coloring pages and worksheets.

We did finish-the-pattern, whats different?, and other math, color and shape worksheets. (she loves worksheets I swear!)

We played many games including don't spill the beans, Tangrams (we got our set at AC Moore using a 50% off coupon! They also have a ton of Melissa and Doug toys there! Just FYI), Melissa and Doug word builder and go fish.

We did many Brown Bear activities including graphing, hand made book making, head and tails matching (turned out to be way to easy for her so these became our go fish cards), counting practice and number order, there were more.... I don't remember all the ones we did but I got all of my printables from; http://www.1plus1plus1equals1.com/BrowBearBrownBear.html check it out!