Happy Valentine's Day

We've spent all week on Valentine's. We learned about how God loves us, loving others, caring for each other, and helping. 

Making Valentine's cards for family and the residence at a retirement home where we have music class. I personally loved seeing the residence receive all the cards the kids made for them; one resident, bedridden made the biggest impression. She just kept saying 'thank you' with tears in her eyes. I'm so glad B is surrounded by older adults and that he willing engages with them.

Matching hearts with numbers.

We started working on the more and less concept

I found this cute and simple graph which we used with conversation heart candies. I can't remember where this graph came from, if it's yours let me know and I'll give you credit.

Lacing activity from confessions of a homeschooler.

These super cute cookie cutters are from the grocery store. When I saw them I thought these will be perfect for size order.

B even stacked the size order like this.

Heart number puzzle, I wasn't sure this would go over well with B. He really resist counting combined with matching. I was surprised he was actually into this activity, of course looking back I realize it's probably because it was a puzzle & he had to fix the hearts.

Lower case & Upper case matching. You can find these heart stickers from Mardel's.

Since we live in Texas we don't really have Winter, and one day this week the temperatures were in the high 70's. Deciding to take advantage of the weather and some outdoor time, I brought our art outdoors. I hung a long piece of our easel paper to the fence, set out some red and white paint, and let the artist begin to create. So in my head, I thought B is going to love getting to paint this way and he'll spend at least 30 20 minutes....NOPE, 5 minutes...1,2,3,4,5! By the time I got it all set up and went to grab the camera, he decided he was done.

Practing cutting on some hearts.

I can't remember where I found this and it seemed like a simple task, but I learned B doesn't understand ordinal numbers (1st, 2nd etc). I'm not sure why I thought he knew this, but I did.  However, by the time we got to the third row he was beginning to understand it. I guess it's good to try things out of their cognitive level; some where along the way he'll pick something up from it.

Our science experiement this week, observing converstation hearts. 2teachingmommies provides a easy questionaire asking questions like, are the hearts big/small, hard/soft, sweet/sour. B was very into this, but only because he knew once we finished he got to eat the few pieces we had used.

Matching the heart boxes with the correct number. You can find the boxes at the dollar store & the little hearts are from the dollar spot in target.

Making pairs.

I love clearence racks! I snagged these felt hearts from Target after Christmas for .30 for a set of 4. When I saw them I first thought about using them on the felt board with a story, but then decided with several colors we could use them for making patterns.

Tracing the letter 'V' for valentine with hearts. I love that B is finally understanding that certain items in a tray mean we are working on a particular activity. He didn't ask about what we were doing with this tray, just pulled it out and went right to work; as well as a few other trays from this unit.

Here are a few books to enjoy over Valentine's week:

 

 

Here's my little Valentine.

Daddy was out of town :( so we got to spend a fun day together, just Mommy and B. We had music class, where we passed out our Valentine's we made. Later we exchanged our Valentine's to each other. B made Mommy a pretty card & B got "the bestest book". Actually he got a card that sings 'Life is a Highway' from the Cars movie (his favorite). His reaction was priceless, I wish I had a camera. He was extremely excited and overly sweet, continually thanking me, telling me he loved it. I knew he'd like it because it was Cars, but not as much as he did. Once the excitement of the card wore off a little, we headed outside where we had a picnic on his playscape fort. Overall a pretty good day, just needed Daddy to make it a great day.

Happy Valentine's Day to you all!

Smile!

Did you know February is Dental Health month?

 It is, so for a week we 'brushed up' ;)  on our knowledge of our teeth. We spent most of the week learning how to care for them; what we can do to keep them healthy.

 We sorted healthy and non healthy foods that made our teeth happy or sad.

 We drew cavities on a tooth to show what happens when we don't care for our teeth.

A silly game of drop the toothbrush in the bucket. It's much harder than it looks.



 B also used some floss picks to drop in the bucket...although he decided standing didn't work for these.

If you can't afford to buy new toothbrushes for this unit,

 save old ones you would toss out & bleach them. The floss picks come in packs of 100 for $2.

 Matching the number with the correct amount of teeth.

You can find these teeth erasers at Oriental Trading.com

B practiced brushing a molar.

This is the bottom of a soda bottle, it looks like a molar when it's flipped over.

 Way cheaper than a real diagram. We used shaving cream for the toothpaste. He really like this and asked to do it repeatedly. *This is extremely messy. 



We also used the toothbrush, floss and floss pick to paint with. We used white paint, but I think cheap toothpaste would be fun too. 

Our happy and sad teeth were reused when we cut out and glued pictures of foods that are healthy or non-healthy for our teeth.

Sequencing - How to brush your teeth

I found this super cute snack online,

only I wish I would have know what a hassle it would turn out to be for us.

It's made from apple wedges, peanut butter and marshmallows to make a smile. First off, PB doesn't really stick to apples. Secondly, when using a apple slicer be very, very careful...I had just given B the 'it's very sharp' speech when I sliced my finger. Super fun & painful, nothing requiring stitches...but not fun! However, I learned something else new in that moment. B has really been listening and comprehending our lessons. The second he knew I was hurt, he went running. When I asked what he was doing, he said, 'I gotta call 911 for you, Mommy!'. He was so sweet and wanting to take care of me. Now I know if I ever really needed him to, he would know what to do.

Practicing our letters of the week 'D & T'.

These are super cool, wiki sticks letter tracing cards. Lakeshore Learning carries these for around $10.

We also played a fun game of find something that starts with D & T. To make it more of a challenge for B we set a timer to see how many objects he could find in a set time for each tray. 

 'T' was easy...truck(s), trailer, train tracks, toy, tire

'D' had a slow start...Dinosaur

A few books on teeth and dentist.

Do you have any fun ideas for teeth or the dentist?



Our Heart

What do most of us think of when we think of February? Valentine's Day, but I decided I didn't want to spend an entire month on those crafts, books, etc. While we will cover that, don't worry ;) we are spending a week on our real heart. You know the one that pumps blood to the rest of your body and keeps you alive. Yep, that one. I know it's slightly advanced for a three year old, but he has been very into his doctor's kit he received for Christmas. So the heart seemed like a good starting spot, especially since it's February.

Here are a few of our Healthy Heart activities...

Number matching with heart stamps.

Listening to his resting heart before we played a game. (I know it doesn't look like it's on his heart...he moved as I snapped the picture).

Jumping on numbered hearts, afterwards we listened to our active hearts to hear the difference. 

We also read books and talked about how our heart works.

Freeform fingerpainting of a heart.

Another freeform art heart; he squeezed painted onto a piece of paper, folded it in half and flattened it. This was the result.

We had a fun scavenger treasure hunt, looking for letters all over the house. Each heart has a letter that spells B's name. After we found each one, B would tell me the letter, what sound it makes and what starts with that letter. When he found B, he said B that's starts my name. He was right, once all were found we worked on what it could spell. He wasn't so impressed that the 'treasure' was spelling his name, so we had to find a better treat. Thanks to our neighbor girl scout, we had just the thing! Thin Mints ;)

This week has also been all about the letter H. I found this worksheet on first-school and wasn't sure how B would respond to it, but he surprised me. He was actually having fun making H's and matching the words.

Here's B's first real attempt at writing letters.

Tracing the letter 'H' with hearts. 

Our hearts need healthy food to stay strong and we learned about what foods are healthy and bad.

and we even made some heart shaped and heart healthy food.

Heart PB & J - a fun way to make a favorite even better!

We were also in luck this week because one of our local hospitals had a mock surgery event. They opened up the entire teaching hospital for tours, presentations and a few hands on activities. While this was really geared for older children B got to use some interesting equipement.

Paging Dr. B...you're needed in surgery!

Taking the staples out, after he got to staple the stomach together.

Using a instrument for brain surgery.

Checking the blood pressure.

Touring the Starflight unit.

One of the many machines used in open heart surgery.

We even got to visit Elmo who was recovering from surgery.