Valentine's Day for Preschoolers - Part 3

And here are the last activities the Valentine's Day Week brought us. Thankfully, there were no complaints that it was too pink or girly that week. :)

Love Potion - Filling with an eye dropper

"Oh why not?", I thought. Kids love potions, right? Adrian colored the water red himself by squeezing a few drops of food coloring and then proceeded to squeeze the eye dropper until all the water from the bowl had been transferred to the potion bottle. I initially had fancied a test tube but as usual, could not find the desired object in time for the activity (ugh!) No biggie as I had no stand for my tubes anyway. After the red water transfer, Adrian was invited to sprinkle some glitter and a drop of perfume from a tiny sample tube I was given at a store. 

Adrian preparing the love potion...with love!

Arranging a bouquet of roses - inserting roses into punched holes

This one is more of a toddler activity I guess but I thought it may still be a tad bit challenging for Adrian considering these silk roses have thorns (making insertion more difficult). On top of that, the stems are so long that Adrian had to take care where he was putting the roses as the short vase (a cottage cheese container) might topple over. So basically, the vase had to be held tightly as Adrian chose carefully where the next flower would go so as to not upset the arrangement. In the end, it was a success!

Making a Valentine

Now it may not look like much but making this Valentine took quite a bit of fine motor effort. Adrian had to crumple all the pink strips of tissue paper I had prepared and then he had to dip them in the liquid glue and press them inside the pre-drawn heart I had crayoned on the card. I guess we lost of bit of the shape as we went along but it's probably because I didn't make my heart "deep" enough.

Pink Tower and extensions

One of the first materials I purchased after deciding to homeschool my then 3 year old Adrian was the Pink Tower. It seemed like it was a symbol of the Montessori education; a must-have in our home. Fast-forward a year and a half later and the Pink Tower has not been touched much. Let's just say so far, I haven't gotten my money out of it! :) Being that it's Valentine's Day and that Valentine's Day is usually associated with red AND pink, I figured I would  dust it off and try to make it worth my investment... I'll be honest, Adrian tried hard but had very limited success in making these pink tower extensions. We'll try it again but with less blocks next time and when he is not sick. I proceeded to show him the pattern to reproduce with my own pink tower (pink construction paper cut the same size as the blocks of the pink tower) and asked him to make his next to mine but in the end, he had to do it on top of mine...

The "crane" extension

The "diamond" extension

The "diamonds and squares" extension

The "shelf" extension

Many more extensions of the Pink Tower are possible. These are just a few we tried. Eventually, I'd love to get the brown stairs and make even more designs. Adrian is just not into "blocks" so I'm not sure it's worth buying but we'll see...

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Valentine's Day for Preschoolers - Part 2

Valentine's Day has come and gone and you're probably already preparing your St.Patrick's Day trays but I'm more of a last minute-type of person. Always have been. It always gets done but I work better under pressure when it comes to "curriculum". Anyhow, here are a few more "V" Day activities we enjoyed last week...

Craft / Fine Motor - Make a Valentine's Day Sun-catcher

I've seen the sun-catcher done with "contact paper" a lot. Unfortunately, I didn't find my sheets until after we had completed our craft. This is always the way it goes here. (Note to self: I really need to get around these school boxes and organize them better). Anyhow, this sun-catcher was made with a sheet of wax paper, pink and red tissue paper, glue and red construction paper. I personally pre-cut the heart made of wax paper and heart made of construction paper. I glued them together. All that was left was for Adrian to tear the tissue paper (fine motor) and paint some glue on the wax paper heart and then put the tissue paper on top of the glue he had just spread on the wax heart. Voila! A nice Valentine's Day decoration. He was so proud to decorate the window and his sister loved seeing "Adrian's heart" everyday.

Preparing a Valentine's Day Snack

Well, these don't look as pretty as my regular "tuxedo" chocolate covered strawberries but I had to make this activity preschooler friendly...As such, Adrian washed the strawberries, dried them, poured the chocolate chips into a bowl, helped with the microwave and the stirring of the melting chips and finally, coated all this red fruit with the melted chocolate. He then laid the strawberries on a waxed sheet of paper until dried (unless he decided to roll some into mini chocolate chips or sprinkles prior to drying).  When little Zahavah woke up, Adrian was very proud to carry out his tray of strawberries. I allowed him to choose two, and to give two to Z and of course I put the rest away. When his daddy came home on Valentine's Day, he was glad to offer him his freshly made treats.

Tweezing Candy Hearts into Heart Shaped Ice Tray

Using small candy hearts and toast tongs, Adrian had to tweeze the right amount of hearts into the right compartment. That's right. Under these candies is a number ranging from 2 to 8. Adrian had to tweeze AND count. Tweezing has become a bit easier so to add to the challenge, I decided to add counting. It definitely made things more interesting.

Mending Broken Hearts - A counting-puzzle Activity

Sherine at Trial and Error Mama had a broken heart activity like this (I first saw it first on Living Montessori Now) and I thought it was purely adorable so I made one as well. I wish I had had access to cuter craft materials to make it more presentable but it still served the purpose and Adrian still liked it.

Describing Textured Hearts - Enrichment of Vocabulary

I've been trying to get my boy talking lately. He's a little man of very few words, especially when describing so I put out this heart-shaped pan filled with hearts made of different materials. I then asked him to describe each heart with two words. At first, it was impossible difficult. He could not find much to say at all and I had to prompt him but towards the end, it was more natural. I was simply looking for adjective complimenting the size, color, texture, material of the heart. 

Hearts included:

Home-cut Foam heart

Home-cut Felt heart

Crepe Paper Hear (from Lauri Toddler Tote puzzle)

Wooden Heart (from Melissa & Doug Sweet Tower)

Plastic Heart (from Fisher-Price Tea Set)

Candy Heart

Foil Wrapped Chocolate Heart

Dare you add an ice shaped heart? I did not! :) But I sure thought about it! :)

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Valentine's Day for Preschoolers - Part 1

How was your Valentine's Day? Is it even celebrated in your part of the world? I know American and Canadian stores always have beautiful pink and red display of roses, boxes of chocolates and cuddly teddy bears on their shelf but in Europe, it is not so much the case; at least not over here in Germany. Valentine's Day is "observed" but not "commercial". As such, finding little trinkets for school was quite difficult. I would usually head over to a "dollar store" to pick up small items to count, sort and tweeze but no such luck this year. *sigh* Anyhow, here's a look at what we did this year in our Valentine's Day Unit...

Revealing Hearts & Watercolors

If you haven't tried anything like this before, you totally should. Adrian LOVED making words appear with watercolors. I shaped these papers like hearts for Valentine's Day but it could be done for any time of year of course. First, write down with a white pencil a word on a white paper and then bring out your watercolors (We used Crayola's Washable watercolors). While being painted, the word will "magically" start appearing. After it had appeared, Id' asked Adrian to read it and act it out. He was  able to read about half the words and I helped him read the other half. Overall, a big hit. Original idea to b credited to BHG.

Valentine's Day Number 1-30 Bingo

Who doesn't like Bingo? And how cute is this tray? I found these pre-made cards on The Idea Room. You can also customize the cards by printing blank ones if you need higher numbers or letters. For chips, we used some Valentine's Day candies I found at the grocery store.

Making Chocolate Truffles with Playdough

You have no idea how fast I ate those so I could have an empty box of Valentine's Day chocolates for this activity! :) I just love to have Adrian do playdough activities and couldn't resist this one. Adrian still has trouble (lack of motivation?) making playdough balls but I thought this empty box of chocolate and chocolate colored and smelling dough might make it fun (Tutti Frutti brand makes lots of GREAT smelling dough...vanilla, strawberry, chocolate, etc.). Unfortunately, it didn't. These perfect little truffles were all made by me. :( Ugh...

Tweezing Fake Rose Petals

I once bought a small bag of fake rose petals to take pictures of a tiny little baby Adrian. Remembering I had that bag, I pulled it out and poured 20 petals in a heart-shaped baking pan. With a pair of tweezer, Adrian was all set to tweeze the rose petals into another bowl (not pictured).

Lacing a Heart

Lacing is always a popular activity here. This time I asked Adrian to lace over instead of over and under. We also used a ribbon instead of a shoelace. 

Matching Cards + Using Heart Paperclips

Remember making heart shaped paperclips from regular paperclips? I somehow remembered doing that while brainstorming about Valentine's Day and decided to have Adrian paperclip matching cards with heart shaped paperclips. (Now if I could only have found red ones!) It was a bit more difficult finding the opening but at the same time, the opening is wider making it easier to insert the pair of cards. The cards were printed from a pack made by Jolanthe at Homeschool Creations.

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Happy Valentine's Day Belated from Adrian (photo dated 2009)

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