Love is in the air!


This was a FUN unit for us! Nora and I loved all the pink, purple and red decorations (Conall, not so much, but he learned to live with it). I really ran with the LOVE aspect of Valentine's Day - we definitely had a celebration of love! I tried to incorporate into all of my lessons the importance of friendship, empathy + compassion, ways we can show love as well as an appreciation for our family and friends.

A super cute banner I made with my cricut! "But the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control." -Galatians 5:22-23

The cutest sensory bin ever!


I loved making this sensory bin! It was cheap and easy, and because Hobby Lobby had all their Valentine's stuff in one aisle, it took my no time at all to gather all my items! I used dyed rice (half dark pink, half light pink) for my filler, and different shape/texture hearts, pompoms, glass beads, and buckets for special items. And some mini dinosaurs for Conall :)

Love lifts us up!


I found this project on Pinterest and knew right away we HAD to do it! I took a picture of each of them against a plain wall, and then (in Photoshop) deleted the background and printed them out (I also used my Cricut to print-and-cut so that I didn't have to cut them out by hand). I also used my Cricut to cut hearts with all different colors and patterns of paper (you can totally do all of this by hand, BTW). I had each little pick a number between 1-10, and then they had to select that same number of hearts (yay math!). They were then instructed to place the hearts all over the paper and glue them down (yay for following directions AND using hand strength to squeeze the glue bottle!). I then used a fine point sharpie to create the "strings" and finally they put their names on their paper. Who knew this adorable craft could cover so many skills!

Candy + math = fun!


I used a little cupcake stand I got in the Target dollar section to hold our counters this week. The pompoms were fun to play with, but the candy hearts were the true stars of math this unit! As you can see, they were used for counting in just about every project. Conall used this Valentine's themed graphing sheet (link below) to group the candy hearts by color, count how many of each, and compare each group using phrases like 'greater than' and 'less than'. We even worked on basic addition ("if we added one more Purple Heart to our 5, we'd then have 6 just like the green hearts"). The reward for working hard on his graph? All the candy hearts his tummy could hold!

Love bugs, homemade valentines, and Mr. & Mrs. Gnome


These love bugs are SO cute! Conall spelled out his name by writing one letter per heart, glued them together, decorated the face, and attached feet and antennas. The valentines were a homemade creation; I made the template on my computer, printed and cut them out, then used red paint to put each kiddo's thumbprint on it. I then took a fine sharpie to make little people out of them. We've already mailed these off to family! And the gnomes are, well, a super easy store-bought craft! I saw these at Hobby Lobby; they're all different foam sticker pieces that they had to assemble.

We really enjoyed our books these past two weeks! While there were some that were definitely Valentine's Day themed, there were also several that were just about love and friendship that would be good all year long. I always like to have our unit-specific books in their own case so that we can vote on which book to read daily during circle time, and they're all out and visible for independent reading time.

coloring, tracing and sorting for my littlest little


Nora had some great activities during this unit! Probably no shock to anyone, but she has a dang good pencil grip compared to her brother (ok, brotherS, who are we kidding). She loves tracing letters and numbers because she can recognize that she's making REAL things. She did pretty well with sorting the hearts from smallest to biggest - she definitely likes doing them on her own or with a little help from Conall (definitely NOT from me!). It's cool to see her progress throughout the weeks!

an activity that's also a gift!


Nora and Conall LOVE having a job to do! So this activity was right up their alley. They needed to make bracelets for our family members using pipe cleaners and assorted beads. Each pipe cleaner had a number taped to it with how many beads it needed. This was a good teamwork activity as Conall had the very big responsibility of making sure Nora had the right number of beads on each one. Littles teaching littles - my kind of school! :)

numbers


Conall had to figure out which number came next in the group of four (that's the easy part for him) and write the number without any help from me [except for the first 5] which was definitely the more challenging part for him! As a non-teacher it's hard for me to let him struggle (writing the numbers was a big struggle) but I am constantly reminding myself that my job is to get him ready for Kindergarten!

letters


Conall LOVES letters! I think he's very proud of himself for knowing which lowercase goes with each uppercase, as well as the letter sounds. For this activity, he would pick a letter square out of a bowl, and then find its lowercase match, and X it out once he shouted out the letter sound. Uppers, lowers, sounds, and writing!