Feelings and Emotions

We were definitely in touch with our emotions this week with our theme of Feelings and Emotions! We acted feelings out, had fun expressing ourselves and talked about how it was okay to have all different types of emotions. Check out some activities we did this week!

 

 

We started our week off with a cooking activity in our school’s Kids Kitchen. We each chose an emotion and made “Emotional Cookies.” The kids loved the thought of making cookies with faces on them!

 

 

While we waited for the cookies to bake we played “Simon Says” with different emotions. It was super silly!!

 

 

Singing is one of my munchkin’s favorite things to do. We had tons of fun singing “If You’re Happy and You Know It,” to explore more about emotions at Circle Time.

We talked all about colors that made us happy and we decided to paint with orange and yellow. Later, I cut them into little sun shines, because, well, doesn’t sun shine make you happy J

 

We have these great emotional cards that show different people's real emotions. As a table activity, my munchkins had a great time pointing out all of the different emotions they recognized.

 

 

Our next focus was on hurt feelings. This happens a lot at this age and I thought would be a fun topic to discuss.

We played with the idea of band aids fixing our “emotional boo boos” at Circle Time. We also explored the idea of “big” and “small” and each took a turn pointing out the different sized band aids.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Afterwards, we did an art project with band aids. I showed my munchkins how they can create a person from the band aids, then let their creativity get to work with their very own project. They honed in on their creativity and fine motor skills as they peeled the band aids and placed them all by themselves.

 

 

 

 

As a fun table activity, I attached a magnetic paper clip to emotion cards. My munchkins had a blast “Fishing for Emotions,” while they worked their hand-eye coordination, fine motor skills and pincer grip strength.

 

 

Our next focus was on negative feelings: the grouchies, sad and mad feelings. We read a fun story called, “TheGrouchies,” by Debbie Wagenbach, and made our very own grouchy clouds for art.

 

We sang our grouchy version of “If You’re Mad and You Know It,” and had fun acting out grumpy poses!!

 

Our last day of the week was a complete review of our study. We played a modified version of Memory, suited for our age-group. All of the cards were facing up and my munchkins had the task of finding their matches by noticing the similarities with the two cards. By the end, we all made a match!

 

 

 

Our final discussion on feelings led to our art project of the day. We each chose the emotion that we were feeling and decorated it. In order to link in our literacy development, we discussed the beginning letter of each chosen emotion and identified it while saying the word slowly.

 

It’s Dr. Seuss’ Birthday next week! Celebrate with us and check back in next week to see what we were up to! Loads of rhyming words and sillies!

Valentine's Day

Love has definitely been in the air in our classroom! This was our second week of love and we spent most of it learning all about the holiday that celebrates it, Valentine’s Day!

We started our week off in the kitchen! We made red sugar cookies! The munchkins honed in on their cooking skills, fine motor skills and patience while we mixed the ingredients together and waited for the cookies to bake.

They were worth it! So very yummy J

We made a fun art project and created our own fluffy paint! I combined shaving cream and white glue, plus a little water color to add a pop of color, and voila! The munchkins loved the foamy paint!

 

After painting 4 hearts each, and letting them dry of course, the munchkins worked on their fine motor, hand-eye coordination and persistence skills and laced the hearts together. I hung them from the ceiling. So festive!!

 

The next day we read a special book about making valentines. After reviewing the shape of love and valentines we were able to look at the back of the book and identify different colors and shapes hidden on the book. It was a great opportunity to help increase our comprehension and reviewed our shapes and colors!

 

BLOOPER ALERT: For art we had a bit of a blooper activity. They all happen every now and then J We were making our valentine’s bags and had tons of fun painting them. I had cut the top in the shape of a heart but miss-planned. The bag’s paint dried and closed all of the openings. It was a great idea and, with a couple of tweaks, we will try this again next year.

 

Our next trial-run for our Valentine’s collectors were made from small pink and red mailboxes that I picked up from Target. I found some special stickers and the munchkins decorated their mailboxes with the stickers. Stickers are tricky for our age-group so this was a fun, yet challenging task. The end result was a bunch of beautiful treat collectors!!

We talked about the terms Sink and Float today too! I gathered some pink and red items that would float and sink and we had fun watching them react in the water. After a few items, the munchkins had fun predicting the last few objects. We will continue to revisit this concept to help us understand these concepts more. It was tons of fun!!

 

Valentine’s Day couldn’t come quicker! We celebrated all day long! One of the first activities we did was Conversation Heart Math!! Candies and math are the best combination!

First we each took a handful and added it to our graph. We got comfortable with our classification-by-color skills with this activity.

 

We each got a turn to separate the candies on our own with the following activity. Each of my munchkins got a handful of candies and practiced their listening and classification skills. They did a great job with this and we celebrated by eating a candy at the end!!

Next we each handed out valentines! That was too much fun! I was so proud of the munchkins and how polite they all were! Every time a valentine was handed out, we practiced saying, “Happy Valentine’s Day,” and every recipient said, “Thank You!” Yay Munchkins!

We ended our day doing what we love most! We played with babies!!!! What did you do?

 

Check back for our week exploring the rest of our emotions! Silly, sad, mad, excited, scared… It will all be explored!

LOVE

Love is my favorite emotion! With a holiday coming up celebrating love, I thought we should dedicate a whole week just to LOVE!

We began our week off with a discussion of what love is. I got some great answers, but the lit up faces on all of my darling children’s faces were the best part. Everyone loves talking about LOVE!

 

 

After our first discussion and a great book we decided to watercolor coffee filter hearts. These hearts were pre-cut and made with a thick “coffee filter” paper. If you find giant filters and cut them out yourself the tie-dye effect is even better. Here is a little sample of ours.

 

We decided to master some cooking skills as well as some fine motor and sensory skills by making play dough!! The children helped me stir and we added red food coloring and sparkles. I just love sparkles!!

 

The finished product!

 

In the classroom I also set up some more fine motor stations:

We used clothespins with hearts.

 

I also put copies of hearts under sheet protectors, which are great with white board markers. I got the greatest idea on Pinterest and attached pompoms to the ends of the white board markers and the children can erase their marks without having to search for an eraser.

 

The following day we talked about, “How We Give Love,” at Circle Time. The answers were super cute!!

 

We talked about sizes today at as a group and looked at hearts that were bigger, smaller, smallest, etc. The children took turns choosing the bigger or smaller hearts.

Afterwards we made a collage out of the hearts!

 

I made new Peek-A-Boo themed cards: none other than hearts!! We love to count with this activity!! The children look for the peek-a-boo hiding heart and in the meantime they are counting consecutively and focusing on the numerals!! We are already counting to 25!!

 

For art today we continued to focus on developing our fine motor skills, our hand-eye coordination, and our persistence and determination!! We laced an entire heart!! This is not an easy feat for my energy-filled two-year olds and I was very proud of them!! They were proud too!!

 

 

Of course we had to explore the shape that represents LOVE!! After talking about the heart we played a great game. We sang, “I’m Thinking of a Shape (3 times)” then sing, “Where is the heart…” We reviewed all of our basic shapes and colors, sang and had tons of fun!!

 

Our last day this week we focused on the color associated with love- pink and red that is!! We did a science experiment and discovered that red and white makes pink!! The girls helped me and had a blast mixing the paint! My little scientists!!

We couldn’t let our pretty pink paint go to waste!! We tickled our toes and painted our feet with it!!

 

 

Check out our “I Love You” note to our families:

 

Valentine’s Day shenanigans are going to be happening all next week. Check back to see what we were up to!!