Valentine Eve

Tomorrow is the big day in most Preschools! Yes, Valentine's Day is a big deal in our little class. We have worked so hard and had so much fun. But alas, February 15th will be here too soon and all our wonderful hearts will soon be put away. Soon springtime themes of flowers and sunshines will take the place of pink, purple and red hearts. Since everyone has anticipated our big Valentine's Party, I didn't want them to be disappointed so I have declared tomorrow, February 14th as (drumrooooollllllllll) Valentine Party DAY! Yes, you read correctly, the entire day will be a party complete with games (fun and educational of course), special crafts (designed especially with out fine motor skills in mind) and fun food. Heck, we might as well do it now and to be honest who doesn't want an entire day devoted to PARTYING! Here is one of our fun games -

Educational, simple and most importantly very much fun! I have a huge box of hearts with all the number written on them. I love seeing the children's faces when they realize they are adding.
We also have a several match the heart games and our number heart game that we will be playing in large groups. The heart matching game is simple. One heart cut in 2 pieces, put them together to make one. EASY, but instant success! The object of the heart number game is to put the hearts in order, smallest to largest OR largest to smallest.
Another great activity that I've made for our classroom is so simple and cheap. I take the classified section of our newspaper and open it out flat. Then I write a letter or word with a large permanent marker. The students use markers or crayons (we really prefer markers) and trace the word. THEY LOVE IT! At the end of the day - throw the paper away (although some have wanted to take the newspaper home)!
Here are a few of the great activities that we did last week. I really wanted to share them with you because besides being very low cost they became big morale boosters in our class. Instant satisfaction is always a good thing. First is our our little heart shaped handprint for our parents.


This art is so important because the children actually did the placing of their hands themselves. Some of our "hearts" were a bit lopsided, but who cares?? Surely not the parents! The border was especially fun because I tore a scrap piece of poster board and laid it in the middle of their paper. I gave them 2 plates with some old make-up brushes. Their only instructions were to put the paint around the edges. The boys were skeptical of the make-up brushes at first but when they discovered they could bang them up and down to make a neat effect, the game was on! Great, great fun!
We also headed to the kitchen on Friday for a super fun and tasty shape game. We started with some old copies of a worksheet (YUCK, worksheets!)


Okay, it was a worksheet (YAWN!) but I cut out the heart portion and we used our snack to match with the shapesThe triangles are actually graham crackers carefully cut by the teachers, the squares are pieces of Chex Cereal and the circles of course are Fruit Loops! YUMMY and a lot more fun then just coloring shapes (YAWN!)
Oh my, I almost forgot! This was also "N" Week! We ended our week by making a WONDERFUL "Name Poster". A lot of work but oh the results were worth it. First we wrote the child's name with masking tape on a 1/2 sheet of poster board.
Then everyone painted over their names. As soon as they were finished we ripped off the tape to reveal our masterpieces!Again, instant gratification! One Mom even said she was going to frame it! Not much more needs to said.

By the way, I hope you like the new design to my blog. You can tell someone woke up way to early this morning. Well I need to go, I still have a few more hearts to cut out before tomorrow so I better get busy. Thanks so much for check in on us. I hope you come back again!