The Alphabet Unit continues this week with our exploration of the letter B! In planning this curriculum, Peter and I debated over the order in which we wanted to present each letter. Should we progress from easiest to most complicated in terms of writing? Or difficulty in phonemic awareness? Ultimately, we decided to simply go in alphabetic order. Once our Tugboats enter kindergarten, their alphabetic units will be structured differently, but for now we felt it was most important to simply expose the children and begin the alphabetic conversation, all while reinforcing the alphabetic order they are learning as they sing the ABCs.
As often happens when we make decisions theoretically, we discovered the practical difficulty of our decision today! Because it was so successful last week with the letter A, we began the week’s projects with our connect-the-dot pattern that Peter has been developing. What I didn’t fully understand was just how much more difficult the letter B is to write than the letter A is! Like they do, our Tugboats showed us how resilient they are in their eagerness to learn, as they quickly overcame the initial challenge of drawing such a funny-shaped letter. They were quickly requesting more and more dotted papers to trace the letter B. Then they began and expedition to find as many Bs as they could, even finding one on Peter’s T shirt!
We will continue to notice the letter B this week, using a stencil to paint the letter, as well as finding it in the books we read and objects we use daily. Stay tuned for more alphabetic adventures!
The kids were also excited to welcome our third parent helper: Sienna’s Mom, Kristy! Kristy has substituted in the classroom before, so she is a familiar face to most of the children, but it they were thrilled to have her with us while still having Peter and Carissa! The children really enjoyed snuggling with Kristy on the couch to read stories, as well as showing her how beautifully they could trace dots to write the letter B. We can’t wait to have Kristy join us again!