Teach Me How: heart

Since last week's Valentine's activities were put on hold as a result of the snowy weather, we will likely finish up hearts, friends and love themes next week.

Here are a few of the activities that we've been enjoying (when we aren't home for a snowday!)

Valentine's Themed sensory bin - Both the girls and the boys LOVE this bin, containing metallic red 'grass,' purple, white, pink and red pompoms, plastic jewels, heart boxes, silicone candy mold, tongs, foam heart table scatter, red buckets and plastic heart shaped filler. Some kids just like to explore the contents, other like to collect certain items and some kids like to bring it to the kitchen area for a tea party!

Light play with hearts - We've continued exploring different materials on the old overhead projector that I dug out for my classroom. I found these heart shaped translucent bracelets and 'links' in the seasonal aisle at a local big box store - the heart shaped jewels are from the dollar store. We talked about size and spatial vocabulary, colors and counting while playing with the hearts. Now that we've had some more experience with light play, the kids are starting to participate more, ask questions and engage with the concept more than when we first introduced it.

Heart Traywork Activities - Here's one of the activities from my printable hearts pack... and our fine motor gloves in use to help my students work on pinching the clips to open them.

Sometime next week, we'll have our Friendship party, exchange valentines & treats and finish up the activities that I already had planned (for last week) ... then, we'll be ready to move onto Dr. Seuss!!

This weekend, I spent some time updating & adding some new worksheets to my Candy Hearts early math learning packs... then I went to town using them with my 3 1/2 year old! He loved sorting, counting and graphing the hearts - most of all, I think he liked eating them after we were done.

Before we started, I prepared a box of Sweeheart brand candy hearts so that there were no more than 5 of any color. With older kids, you don't need to prepare the box ahead of time! We sorted the colors first - he doesn't know the names of them yet, but was able to match them to the card & put all the hearts of the same color together...

Then we quickly counted each group of hearts - I modeled how to count & touch one item at a time, but he's not there yet. Next, I showed him how to line up the hearts on the graph - we primarily focused on just putting one heart in in each box for now.

Last, we took the hearts off the graph and I helped him to color in the correct quantity of boxes on the graph. He really wasn't into this part and would have just scribbled all over the whole thing had I not had his hand in mine :)