Valentine's 2014

Wait a minute!  What in the world am I doing posting to my blog on at 10:30 a.m. on a Tuesday??  Am I sick?  Is it a school holiday?  Am I playing hokey from school?  No, no and no!  Actually, we are having ANOTHER ice day!  Unlike last time, we received advanced notice and cancelled school for the day!  So, I thought I would take this opportunity to show everyone some of our wonderful Valentine fun!

I'm going to start with an activity that had everyone and I do mean everyone thinking I had lost my mind!  One of our letter this week is "H" and of course all the guys in my class loved telling me that "hammer" starts with "H".  Hmmmmm . . . . ok, let's hammer!?!?!?!  We made hammered hearts!

We started with a real honest to goodness hammer (thank you to my sweet hubby for allowing me to take it to school) and some chalk.  I sprayed the heart with a little water and laid the heart on a cutting board.  The children added pieces of chalk and then we covered it with wax paper. 

Then, I gave the child a hammer (and moved my fingers)!

WOW!  This was fun!  AND loud! 

After we hammered the heart, I sprayed our creations with hairspray (oh my goodness the "H" words) to keep the chalk from rubbing off.  Now this was a "H" week the children will not forget for a while!

We worked several days on our BIG Valentine surprise for our parents.  First we started off by painting a large piece of white construction paper with different colors.  Now, that doesn't sound very fun does it?  Well, it does when you paint it with "super fun" paint brushes . . . .

Everyone had a great time making our beautiful paper.  After it dried, we cut it into small pieces

and glued them to a giant heart.

OOH!  While our hearts were drying we wrote a little message to our parents.  Then, glue on our giant hearts.

 

But of course we did not stop here.  We took everyone picture holding their art work.

 

 

HOLD ON A MINUTE!  We're not done yet . . . . now we need a frame for this amazing photo.  My sweet friend and former co-worker, Martha, messaged me the other day on Facebook (yes, I'm on Facebook!) and asked me if I wanted some old silk roses.  WOW, she knows me ssssoooo well!  She arrived at school with the BIGGEST bag of silk roses I have ever seen!  I realized these would make our Valentine frames perfect.

 

 

I ripped the petals off faster than you could say "Valentines" and we were set!

 

 

The children added the lovely petals to our craft stick frames.

 

I picked up our lovely pictures and we will add them to our frames whenever we get back to school!



Wouldn't you love to receive this

(with your child's picture in it)

for Valentine's day?

 

Finally, no valentine's week is complete without our wonderful "Dancing Heart" girl and "Dancing Heart" boy.  I've been doing these for several years now and they are always a hit.

 

Can you see her hair bow?

The hair on this little fellow looks just

like the guy who made him!

 

Okay, I guess I better head off and do something productive in my house (not really, I'm probably just going to go and scrapbook some more wedding photos!).  I hope you try one or more of our ideas and if you do, please let me know how they turned out.  Thanks for stopping by!





Valentine's 2013 Part 1

Ahhhhh . . . Valentine's Day, which only follows Christmas and birthdays in a child's excitement!  My class is already in a frenzy talking about our Valentine party which is not until next week.  I've tried to stress the meaning of Valentine's Day, you know LOVE and all, but all I hear is CANDY & PARTY!.  Well, I do have four more days to get my message across.  Now, let me show you a couple of really cute and fun hands-on activities we did this past week. 

Here is an oldie but a goodie . . . Heart Man/Lady!  We let the children pick out the matching circles for the eyes, and hearts for the hands and the feet.  Each heart person looked different!  These are just plain fun!

This Heart Man is flying!

Don't you just love Heart Lady's hair and hair bow????

 

Our BIG project this past week has been our "Eric Carle Heart".  This is the second year in a row that we made this and it will not be our last.  First we started by painting a large sheet of construction paper, but we didn't use any paint brushes!  We used scrappers and other objects to spread the paint around. 

 

Next we used stamps to stamp designs into the wet paint!

 

The results were amazing!



 

After they dried, we cut the paper into pieces (GREAT fine motor activities!)

 

and glued the pieces to a giant heart!

 

 

 

 Well, all I can say is WOW!!!!

BUT, we weren't finished!  Next we wrote "I LOVE YOU" on a big piece of construction paper and took a Valentine's picture for our parents.

So far, this project took 3 days to complete, but it was WORTH IT!  Next week we will work on the picture frame! 

I needed an easy but fun Valentine's project was needed for Thursday and I found this on PINTEREST.  It was perfect!

After we traced and cut out the child's hand and arm onto red construction paper, the chidren took over!  After they glued their arm down, the children used cookie cutters dipped in different colored paint to make our "Valentine Love Tree". 

Friday is always fun in our class and this Friday was NO exception.  We made our "Valentine Vulture". 

(Sorry no pictures of the construction process, we were too busy laughing!  Here is another view and write up about him ). 

We spent a good deal of time on Friday in the kitchen talking about volcanoes

and making our very own "colorful volcanoes". Add a little paint to your vinegar and you get super fun!

SERIOUS FUN!

If you haven't already, I highly recommend that you add some paint to your vinegar. 

It is a great way to help work on team-work

while enjoying a little science and color play at the same time.

 

Our Valentine theme will continue through next Thursday so I hope you stop back by and see what else we are up to!

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"!