Valentine's Day Crafts and Activities

It's the month of love! And hearts and chocolate and lots of themed crafts....at least in our house. We took a week off of our usual routine last week and did all things Valentine's Day. I tried to do all things that both my four year old and 20 month old could do, so all of these ideas are good for a variety of ages. Here's how I kept my crew busy this past week...

Valentine Shakers
Here's what you'll need: paper plates, clear tape, and rice or dry beans

I had the kids decorate their plates with stickers and markers. Then we put a little bit of rice on each plate, folded it in half, and taped it shut. They've been making "music" with them all week. ;)

Valentine Snow Globes

We used a couple of Ball jars we had in the house. The kids filled them with foam shapes, hearts made out of pipe cleaners, heart beads, sequins, and glitter. I filled them up with water, sealed them nice and tight, and let them shake away. 

Patterns with Candy Hearts

First, I started a pattern with candy hearts and Rowin (4) had to finish my pattern. Then he wanted to come up with his own patterns. For younger kiddos, stick with AB patterns. For older kids, you can try more challenging patterns like ABB or ABC, etc. 

Digging for Candy Hearts

I buried several candy hearts in a bin filled with rice and gave the kids several digging tools. Rowin, Rayna, and one of their buddies had to dig and find all of the hearts. Then they got to eat them of course!

Make Homemade Valentines

The kids made these for all of the grandparents. Paint + construction paper + stickers = masterpieces. 

Decorate Valentine's Day Cookies

We went super simple this time and used a mix and I'm not gonna lie, they tasted amazing. We didn't even bother pulling out our cute heart cookie cutters. The kids just had fun eating the dough and putting sprinkles on everything. :)

So many fun things to do for Valentine's Day! If you're looking for more ideas, you can check in January 2015 or February 2014 of my Blog Archives. Happy Valentine's Day! :)

Letter K

Happy Sunday! No post last week-my kids spent the week with their grandparents in Michigan! Fun for them, fun for us. :) We just finished up our week of learning letter K today because we didn't get started until Thursday. Here's what we did this week...

Day 1:

• Bible Story/Memory Verse
• Reviewed A-J and introduced K
• Color by Letter

Free printable here

• "Different" pages in workbook (from the Dollar Store)

• Capital and Lowercase Letter Match (I put all of the capitals on one side and all of the lowercase on the other side. Rowin had to find the matches and put them together. We only used the A-K cards.)

Free printable set here

*Toddler Activity-coloring and window stickers (unsuccessful), so I gave her the L-Z cards from the game Ro was playing. 

Day 2:

• Bible Story/Memory Verse
• Reviewed A-K
• ABC Hunt-He had to stamp all of the K/k's (Oops, got tricked by a y!) :)

Free printable here

• We tried making K's out of our bodies
• Block Letter
• First, he traced it with his finger, saying, "Big line down, diagonal in, diagonal out."
• Then he filled it in with glass stones (from the dollar store)

Free printable here

• Writing (We're still doing a modified version of "Handwriting Without Tears" and it's been working really well for him! Thanks Teacher Abbey for the great idea!!)
• Model-I wrote a K on the chalkboard
• He erased it with a small wet paper towel
• He erased it with a small dry paper towel
• He wrote one himself
• Repeat for lowercase and make sure you and your child say the verbal prompt every time  so that it sticks in their head!

• "What Belongs?" pages in workbook

• Roll-A-Snowman Game
• You take turns rolling a die and use the guidelines below to draw different parts of a snowman, depending on what you roll. Good for practicing taking turns, counting, and fine motor skills (drawing). Unfortunately, I don't have a printable for this one but you could easily just draw this on a piece of paper to play.

*Toddler Activity-dot markers, glass stones, and chalk/chalkboard-Unfortunately, this was the day Rayna started getting sick, so wasn't really happy with any of these activities. Kind of a rough day. :/ 

Day 3:

• Bible Story/Memory Verse
• Reviewed A-K
• Dot Marker Page

Free printable here

• "What Belongs?"-two more pages from his workbook

• King Craft-We used glitter pens, sequins, and foam squares to decorate the crown for this project.

*Toddler Activity-We were lucky today! Rayna was happy to just color. :)

Next week, we're just going to review, play games, and do some Valentine's Day crafts and activities, so stay tuned if you're looking for ideas for the week of Valentine's Day!

Letter J

Hello moms (and dads and grandmas and grandpas)! I have no chit chat for you today. Just the deets.

Day 1:

• Bible Story/Memory Verse (Romans 3:23)
• Reviewed A-I and introduced J
• Color by Letter-Rowin never chooses to color so this was good practice coloring in the lines :)

Free printable here

• Egg Letter Match-Rowin had to find each capital and lowercase letter that matched and put them together. I made a set for A-Z (which took about 5 minutes) but we only used A-J.

• We meant to do our letter basket but never got around to it!

*Toddler Activities: flashcards (she just plays with C and D because they have pictures of a cat and dog) and plastic eggs 

Day 2:

• Bible Story/Memory Verse (started John 3:16)
• Reviewed A-J flashcards
• ABC Hunt-Rowin had to find and circle all of the J's 

Free printable here

• I showed him how to write a capital J and then we "air wrote" them, doing three tuck jumps after each J.
• Block Letter-He traced it with his finger, using the verbal prompt, "Down and around, across the top." Then he filled it in with yarn.

Free Printable here

• Writing
• I modeled writing a capital J on a chalkboard.
• He erased it with a small wad of wet paper towel while saying the verbal prompt.
• He erased it with a dry paper towel while saying the verbal prompt.
• He wrote one himself. 
• Then we did the same thing for a lowercase j. 
• Critter Number Game-We made these a while back. I just pulled them out because it's been a while. For each little critter, Rowin had to give it the right amount of eye balls. This practices letter recognition and counting. 

*Toddler Activities: chalk/chalkboard and yarn

Day 3:

• Bible Story/Memory Verse
• Reviewed A-J Flashcards
• Name practice-Rowin had to put the strips of paper in order to spell his name

More name practice ideas here

• Dot Marker Page

Free Printable here

• Jellyfish Craft

Toddler Activities: We actually did this while Rayna slept today, but my plan for her was stickers/paper and pipe cleaners. :)

Letter I

Welcome back!! I hope you had a great Christmas/New Years! We're easing back into normal life and just this week, picked up where we left off (back in November!) on our letters. It's actually been really nice getting back into a routine and we took so much time off that Rowin was pretty excited to jump back in.
If you know my kids, you know that Rayna is not one to sit and play quietly by herself while I work with Rowin. She wants to do whatever he's doing and if she can't, well then, she'll go play in the toilet or my underwear drawer. SO, for each day that I planned activities for Rowin, I also planned a simple activity for her to do as well.

Here's a look at our first week back...

Day 1:

• Bible story (still plugging along in our Bible Storybook) and memory verse (Romans 3:23)
• Reviewed A-H flashcards (Letter, Sound, Word)
• Introduced I
• Letter Maze
  
  Free printable here
  
  
• Letter Matching Game-We used two different sets of letter flashcards (only letters A-I) and Rowin had to find the two pictures that started with the same letter sound

*Toddler Activity: Coloring book pages and crayons

Day 2:

• Bible story/memory verse
• Reviewed A-I
• I modeled how to write a capital I and then we air wrote five capital I's, using the prompt "Big line down, across the top, across the bottom." We did five jumping jacks in between each time. 
• Dot letter Page

Free printable here

• Block Letter-first Rowin traced the I with his finger two times, then he filled it in with play dough

Free printable here

• Play Dough Playing Time :) 

*Toddler Activity: Dot markers and computer paper

Day 3:

• Bible Story/memory verse
• Reviewed A-I (I spread them out on the carpet and he had to put them in order, A-I, saying each letter as he grabbed it.)
• Writing
• I modeled how to write a capital I on a chalkboard
• Rowin erased it with a wet paper towel (using the verbal prompt)
• Then he erased it with a dry paper towel
• Finally he wrote one himself with chalk
• We repeated the process for lowercase i
• Ice Cream Craft

• Marshmallow Igloo-Rowin used marshmallows to build his own i-i-igloo.

*Toddler Activity: Chalk/chalkboard and puff balls (I made the mistake of giving her the puff balls AFTER I let her eat a few marshmallows so she tried to eat all the puff balls....never a dull moment.)

***We also found this awesome app at the library: LetterSchool ($4.99)
It teaches you how to write each letter, then lets you practice tracing and writing it. Lots of fun interactive images for each letter-stars, fireworks, etc. Rowin loved it so we went home and bought it!

A few similar, FREE apps are:

• ABC Writing
• Tracing ABC
• Letter Writing
• Letter Workbook

One thing to look for though, if you're looking for a writing practice app-make sure the lowercase letters are traditional manuscript, not d'nealian. D'nealian is slanted and a bit curvy/loopy-this is not what is taught in schools anymore, so you wouldn't want to teach your preschooler this way and then have them have to relearn another way in a year or two. 

Christmas Traditions

Wow! It's already December 6th! I had all kinds of fun Thanksgiving things to share with you, but here we are, a few weeks away from Christmas, and who really cares about turkey games now? I will share this though as a recap of our Thanksgiving-our Thankful Wreath.

If you meant to do one for Thanksgiving and time slipped away from you, you could always make the whole thing green, add a little holly and make it a Christmas wreath. I'm totally saving this to remember that when Rowin was four, he was thankful for dinosaurs, lions, our vegetable garden, and Rayna's blue eyes. :)

Anyway, on to Christmas! I most likely won't post much this month, so I thought I would just share a few of our Christmas traditions that we've started as a family. Some are traditions from when my husband and I were little, some we came up with on our own, and some I stole from other creative moms. 

Advent Calendar

I spent a good amount of time making this a couple years ago, but now I can just pull it out every year and it's ready to go! I numbered little envelopes 1-24 and printed off several different Christmas activities. Some of them include: Bake Christmas cookies, Read the Christmas story from Luke, 

Write a letter to Santa, Make a handmade ornament, Sing Christmas carols, etc. I got a lot from Life Your Way-you can click through to this link to print some of hers: Printable Advent Activities

I also have some little burlap bags mixed in too-on those days, the kids find a tiny little gift inside (candy, trinkets, etc.). 

It's nice because all of the activities are things I would try to do with them anyway, but the calendar spreads them all out, makes sure we get them all in, and gives the kids something to look forward to every day.

Christmas Books

I stole this from someone last year and Rowin loves it! I wrapped several Christmas books-ideally we'd have 24, but we don't have that many yet-I think I wrapped about 17!? So, starting December 1st, the kids pick out a a book, unwrap it, and we read it together. 

Elf on the Shelf

I don't think this needs any explaining-we're one of the thousands of families who do this, but it is pretty fun! We don't talk much about the whole "Your elf is watching you and reporting back to Santa." It's just fun watching Rowin search the house for Kevin every day. I also overheard Ro having a conversation with him, telling him how much he likes dinosaurs. :)

So those are just a few of ours. I love hearing other family's traditions! It's nice because our kids are still so young that we can add new things every year and turn them into traditions. However you celebrate with your family, I hope you have a wonderful Christmas!