Getting Ready for Valentine's Day

We've had lots of fun getting ready for Valentine's Day this year! Here are some of the things we have been doing.

Tie-dye Hearts

This is a fun and simple activity with beautiful results. The children painted coffee filters with watered down paint. As they painted, the colors ran together to produce a lovely tie dye affect. When they dried, I cut them into heart shapes and we hung them on the window.

Glitter Hearts

This one is also easy but can be messy. Our class loves glitter and glue so they had a blast making these. I cut out heart shapes and had the children glue a smaller heart onto a large heart. Then they put glue all over and sprinkled glitter on top. We hung these from the ceiling in our classroom and I must say they look very pretty!

Sorting Valentine Shapes

I bought most of these shapes at Target last year and decided to bring them out again this year. There are some hearts, Xs, Os, and other shapes. Last year we used them on the sticky board but this year we decided to sort them in bowls.

I also found these heart shaped bowls that are fun for sorting.

Valentine Art Center

I set out art supplies, hearts, and stickers so that the children could create their own Valentines. This free art encourages creativity and was a big hit with our little artists.

Pink Rice

I added pink rice to our sensory table along with some more of the shapes we used for sorting.

Pink Play Dough

I love this microwave play dough recipe because it is easy to whip up in the classroom with the children. We made a batch of pink for Valentine's Day and used heart cookie cutters with it.

Happy Valentine's Day!

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Some Plant Themed Ideas

Over the past couple of weeks we have been doing lots of plant-themed projects. Here are some of my favorites.

1. Silk Flowers in the Sensory Table

I filled our sensory table with potting soil, added some shovels and flowers pots, and let the children "plant" silk flowers.

2. Bottle Print Flowers

We used recycled plastic bottles to make flowers. Then we drew a little stem on each flower.

3. Sprouting Seeds

Each of the students put a seed in a ziplock bag with a damp paper towel. We hung the bags in the front window and watched them sprout!

 

4. Q-Tip Flowers

I had the children draw stems on a piece of construction paper. Then we used Q-tips to make tiny flowers at the top of each stem.

5. The Parts of a Plant

For this project, I cut out stems and leaves from green paper. I used pieces of brown pipe cleaner for the roots and real seeds for the seeds. I gave each child a set of plant parts and let them glue the parts onto a piece of paper. When they were finished, they drew a flower on their plant. As they worked, we talked about the names of all the different parts of the plant.

6. Gardening

You can always do some real gardening with children too. To read more about this, check out my post on gardening in preschool.

 

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Gardening in Preschool

One of my favorite children's books about gardening is The Curious Garden by Peter Brown. The illustrations in this book are charming and beautiful. It tells the story of a little boy, Liam, who makes his city prettier by growing trees, flowers, and other plants. My classes have always enjoyed reading The Curious Garden. They especially like comparing the picture of the city before it had gardens to the picture of the city after Liam inspired everyone to grow things.

Since we were about to start beautifying our playground with gardens, it seemed to be the appropriate book to read. After reading it, we set out to plant gardens "just like the boy in the book", as one of our students put it.

Over the weekend, I had taken a trip to the local nursery to get some plants and potting soil. I also found some child-sized gardening tools, children's gardening gloves, and small watering cans. We already had some large terracotta pots that I moved into the outdoor kitchen area. Once we went outside, I let the children shovel dirt into (and out of) the pots for a while before we put the plants in.

The actual planting part didn't seem to interest the children very much, so I did most of it.

 

They all loved watering the plants, though. At this rate, these flowers and herbs will never be thirsty!

When we were finished, I let the children use the extra potting soil to fill small terra cota pots...

and plant other things.

They also used some of it to "cook" in the kitchen area.

Mud soup! Yum!

 

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