Heart Activities (Valentine's Day)

We really do not get into any holiday here...but Valentine's is an easy planning day for me because I have so many preschool heart themed activities.  So, I pulled out my tub labeled "hearts" and I filled T.'s cart.  :-)

 Cart from Discount School Supply

 

 www.childcareland.com

T. is interested in letters, words, reading.  No, he didn't know those sight words, but he enjoyed matching the sight words!  The tray on the right, circle the sevens.

I've been been watching T.'s circle formation.  I usually use the ability to close a circle and cross a T, going from left to right instead of starting in the center to go right and center to left, as a clue to when to start more formal letter formation activities. 

  

Play-doh, heart hammer, heart cookie cutter and heart "picks".  :-)  Great fine motor!

 

Scratch board from Discount School Supply.

Older brother helping out since I was busy.  But T. really didn't enjoy this for whatever reason.  Ah, well, that happens sometimes.

 

T.  did enjoy this activity.  I normally use eyedroppers and colored water (that was the sample heart from another child awhile back).  Chose to use actual watercolors this time so that it's a bolder color.  He then glues it to paper when it is dry and uses "crazy" craft scissors to cut around the heart shape. 

 

He didn't get to this one on the same day and I don't think I got a picture of him working on it either.  We placed the sheet of paper on a mini bulletin board.  Had him trace the heart shape with dark marker and use a push pin to make punches around the shape.  If they get the holes close enough, the shape will then come away from the paper on their own.  This is a take from a Montessori activity but I have found that most of my preschoolers can only take this in small doses.  :-)

 

I believe these little alphabet sorting cards are from ChildCareLand also.  I hand wrote the lower case letter and he sorted upper and lower case letter tiles.   We've been working our way through the alphabet in an organized way to not miss any upper and lower case letters.  :-)  I do about 4-5 letters at a time, not necessarily with the same activity though.  I find that for as "routine/structured" as he is, he does not really care for doing the same activity more than one day in a row. 

 

Don't forget the dollar store stencils for painting.  :-)  These don't always turn out well for preschoolers but the process has always been a favorite.  :-)

 

 

Reinforcing pink and purple.  These are the two colors he gets the words mixed up yet.  :-)

 

 

 

By far, my favorite activity of the day.  :-)  And that he did them all correctly was icing on the cake.  I believe the heart links were from Oriental Trading.   

      

 

 

This was actually part of a cover-up game that I used when I had more than one preschooler.  They rolled the dice and covered the number rolled with a heart marker.  Today we used it more as a fine motor activity since these numbers are mastered with T.  He rolled the dice and stacked the correct number of heart erasers onto the heart mat.

 

 

No picture of him working on this wreath either....just the end product.  :-)  I hear a lot of people liking these sticker foamie shapes.  I don't.  I'm disappointed that I can't find theme shapes (only can find basic shapes) without sticker backs.  Even some of my school-agers have a hard time removing the backings on these.  I'd rather just use glue to affix the shapes.  Teaches glue control then.

 

One of the reasons why I didn't get a picture of his working on this wreath was because we were doing school and decorating cookies at the same time :-D

3rd grader

 

4th grader                                          1st grader

 

 For whatever reason, most likely because we were getting done with our first part of the morning, these two kiddos didn't get a snapshot of their cookie decorator.  Got one of C. at the table with his cookies but why not of E.?  I'm not quite sure.  But can't go back and change it...

2nd graders

 (The boy in the picture on the right is actually doing a little activity that went along with our metamorphic rock lesson.  :-)  He's causing a snickers to change by adding pressure and heat.)

 

T. made one also but right as we were eating snack so no picture of him either.  Ah well, can't get do everything!  :-D  We have very busy days...I love the social aspect of having all the kids here...but like everything, there are pros and cons to having such a large group in a small house.  I don't often get posts published on either blogs but if you are interested in our Schooling at Home Adventure you can visit us at www.schoolingathomehappenings.blogspot.com.

 

Make a Word Preschool Tray

Just a quick post about a tray that was enjoyed by 3 year old and may just end up being a new favorite of his mom's.  :-D 

First we layed the cards out to spell his name.  This could be done for other family member's names or sight words!  I like these cards because they show both upper and lowercase one under the other vs. next to each other.

 

Then he sorted out the letter beads (Discount School Supply) onto the cards.

Finally he used pipe cleaners to put the letters on to spell his name.  This was great for color reinforcement and fine motor activity also. 

 

Fun stuff!  Right up his alley :-D

 

Froggy, froggy, green and brown...

Another post with some accumulated activities we did with the frog theme. 

The title of the post is from the song Frogs in School by Julie Austin and it's a favorite around here.  It's on her Fandagumbo CD.  You can find the lyrics at http://julieaustin.com/frogs-in-the-school. 

Bubble Wrap Sensory

Bubble wrap is used quite frequently around here.  They love it and so do I.  I can sit and pop those bubbles and I will definitely have a bit of bubble wrap around for my school-agers next year.  One activity we love and have done multiple times is dish soap and paint on bubble wrap.  This makes some cool prints.  I chose to use just blues and greens this time to make a "pond" to go with the 5 Green and Speckled Frogs song and manipulatives so we can keep the foam here for other uses. 

Froggy Sensory With Hair Gel

During our bug week they really enjoyed finding the bugs in a different spot/to be used with different materials each day so I've done the same with our frogs.  In this picture I put them with hair gel and mancala beads.

Frog and Flies Addition

The Mailbox Preschool/Kindergarten Magazines have centerfold games that can be laminated and used.  This is one of them.  Each child rolled a dice and placed that any flies on the mat.  Very simple addition...great for 3's and 4's!

Sight Word Booklet

These are nice little sight word booklets.  With H. here were found the word "see" on every page.  With K., she was able to read it all on her own.  This booklet is one of several printable booklets from the Mailbox Publication High Frequency Word Booklets.

Bulletin Board Strips

Did another more "formal" activity with our frog bulletin board strips.  This time we played an I Spy where the children guess the number I was thinking about.  I used number formation phrases such as "curve around and slide to the right".  I also chose a number and covered up the number before and the number afterward and the children took turns telling me what those numbers word.  Simple, beneficial!

Frogs on Logs 

Another Mailbox publication activity.  I used their estimation sheet but chose to make logs out of simple construction paper and use our frog manipulatives.  They suggested using green pom poms.  Something similar can easily be made on your own.  I love that picture on the left.  Her estimation was the same as the actual measurement and she let out a huge "whoop!"  LOL  

Frog on a Log Vowels

(Picture isn't grand, sorry!  Sent home both children's work before noticing that none of the quick snapshots turned out.)

Initially I planned to have them use these order by size frogs from to match frog rhyming pictures but chose at the last minute to reinforce those short vowel sounds.  For the toddler I simply used numbers and number dots but focused putting the frogs on the log from biggest to smallest, which he did without a problem.  :-)

Shades of Green Froggies

All the children had such a look of concentration when they were doing this activity.  :-)

This was right up the alley for T. and his sense of order.  :-)

The end product wasn't what I'd call beautiful but the process was great and they did enjoy it.  My goal was to have a project that would dry and go home the same day since it was the last day of school.  If I just let them have free for all with the sponge applicators like I would normally do, they wouldn't dry before noon.  :-)

It incorporated art (shades of color-mix with the children), fine motor and eye-hand coordination activity. 

Lily Pad Number Word Match
www.makinglearningfun.com

This was a great way to see which number words K. actually recognized.  Though I made two "trays", one with larger numbers and one with smaller numbers, only K. really knows a good portion of number words, as she's a bit older so I was watching for decoding practices for H. but K. actually sounded the words out for him.  Simple, easy, and they seemed to enjoy this, especially after T. gave them a frog after they completed each lily pad.  :-)  Metal trays from a dollar store and magnets on the back of the flowers.

Watch Me Grow: Frog

 This is a lovely book! Very informative, great illustrations! Better yet, the frogs I purchased from Dollar Tree matched closely to the frogs in the book!

Also want to remind you to check out the following sites for frog themed activities.  We've done several from them that I didn't post about.

* Frog Frolics Activity Kit from Homeschool Share

(The word find from this kit.  This is one way we complete word finds.  :-)  Colored chips vs. dry-erase markers)

* Frog themed activities from Making Learning Fun

(I had only printed the background frog for the toddler to match the pieces but I ended up going back and printing the background for the other two as well, this puzzle was harder than we thought it was going to be!)

* Frog themed activities from Kidssoup (membership fee required...well worth it!)

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Non-themed activity:  these last few days I've been asking for suggestions of activities they would like to do again.  This was one of the suggestions they gave me.  :-)

And a lovely gift from one of my families!