Valentine's Week!

Oh the madness has begun!  Yes, it is the week before Valentine's Day and we are SO busy at school.  We have been working on the most amazing present for our parents.  Our present includes a big surprise - we are writing and more than just our names!  Yes, for months now we have been working on our writing skills.  We have all different kinds of "pre"-writing activities that the children do everyday.  Most are so much fun they don't even realize they are learning to write.  I have page after page of laminated sheets that we write on each day (thanks to some wonderful dry-erase crayons!!!).  We also use our chalk box to write and draw on every day.

This HUGE box was given to me by one of my sweet parents.

 With a little contact paper our class now has a chalk board box.  

We love writing on it especially with the colored chalk.

OH NO!  I'm off topic again!  Let's get back to our Valentine presents.  Here they are . . . .

Let me tell you how we did this.  First we started by taking our pictures.  Look closely at our background.  My friend, Mrs. Christi found an old table cloth with hearts on it!  Isn't it perfect?!?!?!? AND thanks to my local Walgreens Store and all their fun editing choices, we made our present extra special by adding a HEART shaped photo.  The fun continued when we made our photo mat.  We used marbles and rolled the colors on!

My class loves to do marble rolling!  

It is a great fine motor skill activity 

and they love "reminding" me that we are using my Daddy's old marbles!

Now, let's talk about the "FABULOUS" part!  Look at our writing . . . 

YES, WE WROTE BY OURSELVES!!!!!!  Can you tell I'm proud?  I can hardly wait until Tuesday!!!

We also worked on some artwork that my class called the "Eric Carle Heart".  I guess I've read enough Eric Carle books to make a serious impression on them :0)  We started by painting our paper.  Now, we can't just "paint paper" that would be boring so we PAINTED the paper using all kinds of different objects.  We used a toothbrush - 

We used a make-up brush - 

We also used a plain 'ole paintbrush too!  Then we smeared all the paint together with a scrapper that I found.

The end results were awesome!

But we weren't finished yet!  We cut and tore the paper into strips and pieces (more fine motor skills!).

and glued them on a giant heart.

I added a little glitter glue around the edges and WOW!

These are proudly displayed on my bulletin board wall now and will be kept for our end of the year art show.

Since it was "H" week we wanted to incorporate something with our hands.  I love what we came up with.  This is our first very simple hand project -

 Here is a close-up of our poem.

I loved when the children realized they had made a heart with their hands!

Our second hand project was a little more fun and a lot more yummy!  We made our hand print with some red glitter paint.  

Next, we stamped on some hearts and added the yummy part - Sweet Tart Hearts!

Of course we had to eat some too!  The end results were pretty, fun and tasty!  We called it our "Tree of Love".

I think this year's class loves our weekly science experiments as much as I do.  This week we used the left over "Sweet Tart Hearts" as our experiment.  First, we dissolved them in a small amount of warm water.

The purple and green made a strange combination!

Then we added a small amount of baking soda.  

The acid in the candy and the baking soda made bubbles!

I love doing science experiments with everyday items.  You can find this experiment and others at Candy Experiments .  It is one of our favorite sites!

Thanks for checking on us this week.  I hope you come back and visit us again.  Next week we will have our annual Valentine's Party and talk about the letter "L".  After all, "February is the month of LOVE"!