I told you I was going to post all the ABC scriptures Lydia and I did before I started this blog. Well, the letter A was a pretty good one. But when I realized *this* was all I had for the letter B, I thought, “Oh, wow. That’s a little embarassing.” Not too crafty. Not even very thematic. Oh well. You know by now this blog is not about craftiness…it’s about dropping God’s Word in our kids’ hearts, however and whenever we can!

I remember I just let Lydia look through all my stickers (I have quite a lot because I’ve been saving them all my life. Seriously, do you see the red & yellow “b” on the left? I got that as a prize inside Alphabits cereal when I was a kid.). Hmm. Where was I? Oh yeah, I let Lydia look through all my stickers until we found one that started with the letter “B”.

Our verse is Acts 16:31, “Believe in the Lord Jesus…” The rest of the verse says, “…and you will be saved—you and your household.” When she was little, I just gave her snippets of scripture because I wasn’t sure if she could memorize a long piece. Now I know, I should have given her the whole thing–including the reference. Preschoolers can memorize anything, so make it worth your time and theirs by teaching the whole verse!

I can’t remember what else we did with this verse except I KNOW we read The B Book by Jan and Stan Bernstain. Lydia still loves that book and I can quote the whole thing for you: “Big. Big Brown. Big Brown Bear. Big Brown Bear, Blue Bull…”

Cover of The B Book (Bright and Early Books)

I don’t want to leave your craftiness completely unsatisifed, so here are some really cute “B” crafts for you and your kiddos:

Buzzy B at No Time For Flash Cards

B is for Butterfly at Totally Tots

“B” Activities (including this beehive!) at Mozi Esme

Letter B Handwriting Practice at Christian Preschool Printables

Do you have any fun “B” activities? Feel free to leave a link!

EJ loves boats.  Loves them.  So I thought it would be a perfect way to end B’s week with paper boats!

Folding paper into boats would be a bit hard for EJ right now, so I made them myself last night.  I’m glad I didn’t leave it until this morning - some of the tutorials I found online were very confusing.  I wasted a lot of paper – and I was hoping to be able to send you to a website and say, “Hey, go *here* to learn how to make the best paper boats!”  But I can’t… I just didn’t find any that I liked.  I actually wound up making paper boats the way I used to way back when.  The couple I tried that were different from my old school paper boats… well, a lot of tape was involved to get them into boat-shapes. 

Here’s our fleet….

We learned that the newspaper soaked up water much faster than the white printer paper I used – in fact, one of the large white boats lasted the whole time before it got water-logged and sank. 

We put the boats in one at a time and blew them around… and wound up with a soggy, wet pile of paper after about 5 minutes.  It was fun though!  I even made EJ a paper hat – I figured a Captain of all those boats needed a hat.  EJ didn’t think so, though.  Notice there are no pictures of him wearing it.

After all the paper boats sank, we put some other B-items in the sink.  Did you know that bananas float?  I didn’t before this morning!  We also wound up with an octopus and two racecars in the sink as well.  EJ played in the sink for at least 45 minutes!

I promised a picture of our bubble art masterpiece once it dried…. here it is up on EJ’s “gallery wall.”

Yesterday was a busy day, with no time for a post or even a formal B activity.  We talked a lot about B’s, though, and ate a lot of B foods – broccoli, bread, beans – even some alphabet cookies that my mom brought over for EJ.  Of course, he only ate the B’s.

Today’s activity was so much fun.  Bubble art!  There are so many posts/tutorials/examples of this on the web, with tons of different ways to do this, so I just made up my own bubble paint with products I had on hand.

Bubbles left over from party favors, washable paint, cups, plates, bubble wands, and bubble wrap.  I experimented with the bubble paint solution – adding more paint until it seemed concentrated enough, and then adding a tad bit more water so the bubbles were easier to blow.  Then I cut a couple small sections of the bubble wrap to act as stamps to dip directly into paint.  See?

We headed outside (what a wonderful day – high in the low 70′s in Virginia in September – unheard of!!!) with our paints and a big piece of butcher paper.  EJ started blowing bubbles onto the paper right away – and never touched the bubble wrap stamps.  Oh well.

The bubble art quickly changed into chasing bubbles around the yard, which was tons of fun, too.  Notice his new painting t-shirt: a blue Beatles t-shirt* that I “outgrew” a while ago.  More Bs!!!

We also blew big bubbles in our cups!

Here’s a glimpse of our finished product.  It’s hanging up to dry, and I want to hang it up in EJ’s room when it’s ready.  I’ll get some pictures of it hanging up before the B week is over. 

This project was a hit.  I think if I were to do it again, I’d use food coloring to tint the bubbles – the paint I used didn’t do exactly what I wanted it to do.  Others have also used tempura paint (powdered), but I didn’t have any on hand.  The bubble wrap stamps were not as interesting, although I had fun with them.  It might be more fun as a large scale project just using the bubble wrap.  The extra bubble wrap will be popped soon enough, though, bringing more bubble fun to our B week. 

*EJ’s still wearing the Beatles t-shirt.  I’m going to make him a Beatles fan after all!