Hearts, Valentines and Friendship

This week we incorporated shapes and friendship into our Valentine's Day theme. Some of the books we had available for reading this week were "The Best Thing About Valentines" by Eleanor Hudson, "Valentine Mice" by Bethany Roberts, "The Shape of Me and Other Stuff" by Dr. Seuss and two books from Storyline Online including Eileen Spinelli's Somebody Loves you Mr. Hatch and Enemy Pie by Derek Munson:

For Enemy Pie, I used think- aloud questions which included the following, "I wonder why the dad had his son spend a whole day with Jeremy Ross? I wonder what will happen after the boy and Jeremy spend a day together? Why would the boy let Jeremy Ross go inside his tree house? I wonder what is in the pie?" We came up with the idea that spending time with others helps us become friends and made our own "enemy pie," which was really friendship pie.

 Some of our math and literacy stations included the following activities. The first is a number heart puzzle match that I adapted from File Folder Fun.

This heart activity was adapted from Making Learning Fun.

The heart shape block pattern we used is also from Making Learning Fun.

We spent time as beauticians in the home center and worked with our princess folder games.

We also completed open- ended heart crafts throughout the week with stamping, clear contact paper and stickers.

 

 

 We also explored graphing and science with candy hearts. Our graphing worksheet and observation chart were found at 2 Teaching Mommies.

We also completed a warm water candy heart experiment with a baking soda/ water candy heart experiment. The warm water created the color in the cups and the baking soda hearts floated and fizzed. We also placed candy hearts in Sprite which caused them to float as well. The ideas were found here and at this link.

For our game and music activities, we incorporated ribbon dancers made from crepe paper, action cards made from valentines and a heart-shaped bracelet ring-toss game.

 

 We also spent time with hearts, pink shells and tools in our sensory rices. Later in the week we added our vehicles.

For our light box activity, we added heart-shaped rings, bracelets and a worksheet from this site.

We spent time at the beginning of the week exploring symmetry. The worksheet we used was found here.

We completed our look at symmetry with a squish-art heart activity.

We also completed a couple of book-specific activities. In the book Valentine Mice, the mice end up throwing valentines in the air. I provided tissue paper squares to throw up in the air. We watched how they moved through the air and had a great time doing the activity over and over again.

 

 While exploring The Shape of Me and Other Stuff, we completed life-sized tracings of our bodies and explored shapes with Bendaroos and worksheets from Confessions of a Homeschooler.

 

We had a great day for sticky snow and I will leave you this week with a picture of our snow man. Next week we will explore poetry, rhyme and rhythm. Have a great week!