Deuteronomy 16:15

Deuteronomy 16:15
For the LORD your God will bless you in all your harvest and in all the work of your hands, and your joy will be complete.



Monday, March 5, 2012

Valentine's Theme

Well I am posting this much later than I had planned, but here are some of the fun things we did for our Valentine's theme this year! I have officially had my little blog for a year now, and I so enjoy going back over my old posts, and remembering the fun stuff that we've done together. This blog has been a neat way to share what we're up to with my family and friends who are far away, but mostly it's become an online scrapbook for me. I loved seeing the types of things I did with the kids last year at this time. They have grown, and learned so much in just a year! Things that would have been impossible for both of them last year, they do with such ease now. Anyway, enough reminiscing, and on with the post!

One weekend in early February, we were having yucky weather, and Daddy wanted something fun he could do with the kids that didn't involve him getting jumped on. Thanks to Pinterest, I had a fun craft ready for them in under 5 minutes!


Daddy and the kids made Valentine's Day wreaths. They had fun, it wasn't TOO messy for Daddy, and they turned out super cute!


Although not related to Valentine's Day, Naomi has been in a writing craze and wanting to write everything! Here she is showing off where she had written her name.


This is a Valentines addition tray that I put together for her. I had gotten several packages of foam hearts at the Dollar Tree, and we used them for tons of things! These purple hearts were joined together. I cut them apart, wrote the addition fact on one heart, and the answer on the other. Then I put them in these cute little jars, along with some candy hearts for her to use as counting manipulates.


Naomi would pull an addition problem out of the first jar, use the candy hearts to help her count, and then find the answer on the matching heart in the next jar. You can see to her left where she made the matching pairs of problem/solution. We are working on our addition facts to ten, and she is doing fantastic! She was even able to do some of the easier facts in her head, which tells me she's really mastered the concept. I made another set of hearts of subtraction and we did the same thing with them.


Here the kids had their buckets, and were ready to go on a Valentine's Day Heart Hunt (think same idea as an Easter egg hunt)!


I hid red hearts for Nathan, and pink hearts for Naomi. They were only allowed to put their own colored hearts in their bucket. This worked perfectly as there was no fights about who got more, etc.


I made Naomi's hearts a little harder to find than Nathan's.


After they found all their hearts I had an activity for both of them to do. Nathan stuffed his hearts in this wipes container. We practiced counting. It's harder for him than you would think to shove things into those containers. It's a good strengthening activity for those little fingers!


I had numbered Naomi's hearts 10 to 30 ahead of time. Once she found them she had to match the hearts to the numbers on the chart I made her, and put the numbers in order. It was a good way to help solidify those numbers for her.


Nathan playing with our sorting and counting bears. I love these! We talked about the colors and tried putting the bears in their matching color container.


The heart penguin Naomi made for her Daddy's Valentine.


The heart pig Nathan made for Daddy. 


Nathan scooping up the giant buttons while I was working with Naomi.


Naomi has been doing really well with writing her numbers!


Nathan needed a turn to write his numbers too! ;)


Here Nathan was stringing our giant buttons to make a necklace. I always have a few little activities planned for him, so he has something fun to do while I'm working with Naomi. Once I get Naomi started on something (she prefers to work independently now) I just bounce back to Nathan. Sometimes I feel like a ping-pong ball, but it works!


Here Naomi was working in her Kindergarten math book. She sets the pace as to how many pages (if any) that she does. Some day we do none, one day she did 18!


Nathan likes to sit at our little art desk and do his "work" when Naomi is doing hers. He colors, plays with stickers, does stamps, cuts paper, glues things, etc. It always makes a mess but he has fun!


We made Valentine Love Bugs! They turned out super cute and the kids played with them a ton!


We made these special Valentine birthday cards for Grandpa Canon. First they dot painted the paper, then I cut out the hearts for them, and they glued them down on colored paper.


Then they both wrote in their cards. I'm so proud of Naomi's writing!


We couldn't visit Jim's parents without taking Valentines for Grandma Canon too. We used the kids hands as a background on the paper plates, and then they decorated them. I thought they turned out so pretty!


Naomi needed to work on counting by 10s so we came up with this! I didn't get any pictures of the process, but this is what we ended up with. We counted out, and glued down, 10 lima beans on to each craft stick. We talked about how it would take a long time to count 100 lima beans. Then I introduced skip counting, and talked about how it was a faster way to count to 100. Naomi was thrilled! We glued down 100 lima beans, and then used the hearts to help us practice counting by 10. It was fun, and a good way for Naomi to really understand the concept of skip counting.

Check out my Valentine's Day Board on Pinterest for links, and step by step instructions of everything we did. Also, I have to give credit to another blog I found, Mom to 2 Posh Lil' Divas. Lots of the ideas above I got from their site! Links to the exact posts are on my Pinterest board. We had fun with our little activities, and I think the kids learned lots. It's hard to believe how much they have learned since just last year. My babies are getting so big!

Karla

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