Valentine's Day Activities!!

Ok, so my teacher heart loves when there's a holiday around the corner because holidays are the easiest themes to do millions of things with. We've been busy trying out all kinds of new Valentine's Day projects over here. Some are to practice different skills and concepts and some are just for fun. Most of them only take about five minutes.

Heart Patterns:

Rowin (3 years old) is just starting to understand pattens. So for this activity, I used a heart punch and made several hearts. Then I glued them onto strips of paper in different patterns and had Rowin finish each pattern by finding the heart that came next and gluing it on.

*Tips: If you are just introducing patterns, stick with AB pattens, using only two colors at a time. If your child already understands how to continue a pattern, give him more of a challenge by trying ABC, ABB, or AABC patterns.
I also say the pattern in a singsong voice so that he can hear the repetition. For example, "PINK, red, PINK, red, PINK...what comes next?"

Name Tracing with Candy Hearts:

Write your child's name in big letters on a piece of paper. Have her trace over the letters using candy hearts. Older children (maybe kindergarten through second grade) could do the same activity with sight words or spelling words.

Scrap Paper Heart:

Haha, this is a very unimpressive looking activity (I'm not blind), but it WAS good practice in cutting and gluing! :) Rowin picked out a piece of paper, cut it into smithereens, and then glued the pieces inside a big heart that I drew on a piece of paper. Seems silly but you'd be surprised how many kids get to kindergarten and don't know how to hold scissors or use a glue stick!

Heart Necklace:

If you wanted to make this educational, you could have your child make a necklace or bracelet using a pattern. We just did this for fun. I knew my son would like it because 1) he is into all things girly right now and 2) who doesn't like making beaded necklaces?! The heart beads and stretch lace were both from the Dollar Store-bonus. Getting those tiny beads onto the lace is great fine motor skill pratcice-double bonus.

Candy Sorting:

You can print this free Valentine Candy Count printable from PreKinders at http://www.prekinders.com/valentines-theme/ 
Give your child several candy hearts and have him sort them by color.

Candy Heart Count:

Another free printable from PreKinders! Here's the link again: http://www.prekinders.com/valentines-theme/ 

Have your child fill each heart with candy hearts. Then they have to count how many of each color there are. Rowin doesn't know how to write numbers yet, so after he counted, I wrote the number in a dotted line and he traced over the numbers. 

Candy Heart Graph:

One more from PreKinders :) http://www.prekinders.com/valentines-theme/
This is a good introduction to graphing. Give your child a handful of candy hearts and have her put them in the right column. Once the graph is done, you can ask your child questions like, "Which color did you have the most of? Which color did you have the least of? Which two colors did you have the same amount of?"

Kid Art with Painters Tape

I saw this idea on Pinterest a long time ago and have wanted to do it with Rowin ever since. Since we've been doing a lot of painting over here (now I've started painting all of our dining room chairs!), Rowin has been wanting to help. I actually did let him help me paint one of the chairs, which I was pretty proud of myself for not being a total control freak, but I thought this was a good time to get him a painting project of his own.

All you need is a canvas (any size), painters tape, a paintbrush, and paint. We used Crayola washable paint. You could use whatever you like. I bought two long rectangular canvases because I want to hang them in Rowin's room.

First, tape off a design onto the canvas. Then have your kiddo paint the entire thing. Make sure they paint all the way up to the tape and don't leave any white spaces because then you won't really be able to see the design from the tape.

You could paint these a million different ways. Rowin ended up painting each section a different color which turned out really cool. Older kids could do different patterns or designs in each section. Younger kids could literally smear the paintbrush through all of the colors, glob it over the entire canvas, and it would still turn out really pretty! This is one of those "great for any age" crafts.

Once your child has painted the entire thing, pull all of the tape off. We did while it was still a little wet. And look how pretty! I seriously love it! He hasn't painted the other one yet, but I'm excited to add them to his bedroom for a nice pop of color.

Build an Ice Palace

Well hello again. We've been busy over here painting all of our kitchen cabinets so I haven't posted anything in a while. Rowin actually spent the entire week in Michigan with my parents so that we could get it all done. Praise the Lord for amazing grandparents!! Here's a little Before and After of our kitchen (because I know you care). :)

Anywho...let's see, what was I going to write about....ah yes. Frozen. Are your children as obsessed as mine is? It's pretty bad. Rowin's favorite thing right now is actually dressing up like Elsa and Anna (don't tell my husband I'm telling you this). Luckily, most of his friends are girls. 

He makes a cute Princess Anna, right? I'm saving this to show his friends when he's sixteen. 

So since anything Frozen is a big hit in our house, we decided to build an Ice Palace one day. We used a diaper box, paint, construction paper, markers, and a little glitter. We cut out a door, painted and decorated it, and then added some paper cones to the top. He got some little Frozen figurines for Christmas which were the perfect size for our Ice Palace. 

If you have other fun Frozen activities that you've done with your little ones, I'm all ears! Please share! :)

Photo Puzzles

Happy New Year! I hope you had a nice, restful holiday season. Now that we've taken down our tree, put our house back together, and put away all of our new Christmas treasures, I thought I'd sit down with a cup of coffee and write my first post for the new year. 

I actually haven't done anything "new" yet this year. :) I just looked through my photos and found this one that I never wrote a post about. It's the same idea as the popsicle stick puzzles that I did a while back, but this requires about 15 seconds to put together whereas the other one took a little more time and required Mod Podge and popsicle sticks. 

I found a few pictures that I had printed (I used ones of Rowin with with friends and family). Then I just cut them up-some in zigzags, some in squiggly lines, and some random. I put them each in their own little bag and Rowin puts them together like mini puzzles.

Tuck them away with any other little busy bag activities you might have and pull them back out on a day when you're stuck inside because it's too cold to go anywhere!