Growing Kinders: Valentine’s

Valentine’s

Some Valentine’s fun!

During play centers at the end of the day, the children have been wanting to learn how to make a heart. So, we decided to do some interactive writing. We talk about the steps of making the heart, write about it, and practice it. The easiest way I’ve found to teach kids how to make a heart is to tell them to draw a 2. Some kids get it, some don’t! We have lots of fun trying to make hearts though! {And I love getting lots of sweet hearts from my kiddos!!}

I haven’t wanted to do these window decorations before because they are such a pain! During my prep it was contact paper mayhem … OLD contact paper that wouldn’t peel off nicely…argh…but, the did turn out soo pretty Smile

On Valentine’s Day, the children made these adorable little hats. I saw them on a website a couple of years ago, but I can’t remember where! {If you know, please leave a comment, so I can give credit!}

You can download my version here.

These turned out absolutely ADORABLE! However, I learned my lesson to not make the arms sooo long and to use bigger hearts – maybe I die-cut next year… (They are from Kim’s Valentine Pack)

I always do a ice cream sundae party on Valentine’s day, but thanks to the girls over at What the Teacher Wants, it became extra special!! The kids had a fun scavenger hunt to get their ice cream. You can download the recording sheet here.

I have ALWAYS wanted to recycle our old crayons to make the cute shape crayons, but never had. This year for Valentine’s Day, I saw this blog post and decided to do it! I had already bought the ice cube trays intending to make them at some point, this was just a nice kick in my you know what to get them done! I can’t wait to make another set for my girls! I love my 8 year old for helping me to peel all of the crayons!

Literacy Centers for the week:

Short U and I vowel sort:

Short A and O vowel sort:

(This is also from Kim’s Valentine Pack)

Building word families:

Listening Center:

Lift The Flap Syllable Center:

Phoneme Substitution:

I had this AMAZING idea when I was putting this center together to keep all of the pieces together. First, I printed the game pieces on the white side of scrapbooking paper to keep everything all coordinated. You could also mount on construction paper, but this is SO much faster. THEN (and here’s the brilliant part) instead of using a baggie to keep all the pieces together, I stuck a library pocket to the back! I just cut off the top part and stuck it on! The cards fit nicely in the pocket, and the kids are doing a great job keeping all the pieces together!

Valentine Spin And Write – the kiddos LOVED this new twist on the dice roll sight word graph. They spin the spinner to determine the word they are going to write, and then spin the second spinner to determine which tool they use. Too Fun!

You can download the Valentine’s version here!

Valentine Math Centers:

(No action shots here, just snapped some quick pictures of the centers in their drawers!!)

In this center the children count the number of hearts as indicated by the response sheet and place them on the 20 grid. They then color in the corresponding number of square on their sheet. (The dice don’t belong in there!)

Measuring hearts with standard and non-standard units (conversation hearts and inches)

Time concentration for reading clocks to the hour. (Again printed on the back of scrapbook paper – not my idea, but brilliant!!)

Odd and Even Numbers (don’t you just love the heart shaped pasta! I snap shaped pasta up when I see them! You never know when you can use them for counters!)

Coin identification: (I’ve fixed the spinner! It was missing the dollar!!)

Subtraction with Hershey’s kisses. I also have the subtraction cards from Making Learning Fun. They really help those kiddos that need an extra hand!

Vertical addition with the fun heart shaped pasta shapes! I used a 12 sided dice for this one. The children have a good handle on adding with manipulatives with the numbers 1-6, so I wanted to push them a bit further! Those kids that still struggle with higher numbers use the regular dice.