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!!

 

 

 

Community Helpers, Week 2!

We spent two awesomely fun-filled weeks learning all about the Community Helpers around town and discussed what kinds of jobs we may want to have when we grow up…

Here is a peek at our second week of study:

We began our second week off with a study on the different branches of the military. We live in San Diego and have all three branches: the Army, Navy and Marines fairly close. Some of us have mommies and daddies or other family and neighbors that are in the military so this was a great group to study! After reading a great Navy Book a parent brought in, we talked about the meaning of the word “Camouflage” and made a fun camouflage art project!

We love our Peek-A-Boo Counting!! This week our theme was a police badge! Super fun! All of the children love to count aloud and pay attention to the numerals so they can find the hiding “peek-a-boo” badge! They are all such great counters because of this activity. When we begin our study of numeral recognition, I know that they will be able to pick it up quickly because of this activity too! It’s so fun and educational!

 

 

Our next day of study was all about doctors! We have a great community helper puzzle set so at Circle Time we worked together to put a doctor puzzle together. We talked about the trick of beginning on the corners and sides and how to find them.

For art we made a doctor's hat. I wrote the children’s names on the head band (ex: Doctor Vivienne) and they decorated it with dot-art paint. Afterwards, they worked their fine motor skills and wrapped tin foil around a pre-cut cardboard circle.

 

 

I affixed it all together and they all had a chance to be little doctors for the day!

 

After talking about doctors for people, we talked about animal doctors- Veterinarians! I had all the children bring in their own stuffed animal to fix-up. At circle time, after showing them how, I gave them each some gauze to wrap up a boo-boo on their animal.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For science, we took our white gauze and red and blue tinted water. After we put some gauze in the red and blue we mixed the waters together and made purple! We had three different colored gauze groups!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After the gauze dried the children got to create art with it and made some very different sculptures, mounds and designs! Lots of creativity at work!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To help produce stronger fine motor skills we got to “feed” a horse by scooping apples and a doggie by picking up bones with tweezers. These are great activities from the Lakeshore Company.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The following day we talked all about Mail Carriers! We had a lot of fun learning about mail boxes and how the mail system works, then created our own special “giant” stamp.

I asked each child’s parent to secretly write their children a special letter and place it in an envelope. I told the children that the Mailman came to see us and delivered special letters just for them! I gave them their letters and they were so excited!

After they opened their letters, working on their fine motor skills, I read each of them their letters. They requested to hear it twice and would have continued to have me reread their letters if we had time. It was very special for them!

It was also a great experience for them to see how letters make up messages that contain meaning!

 

Afterwards, we made special art, stuffed our own envelopes and decorated our envelopes. We delivered mail back to our parents!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our last special Community Helper of focus was a Painter. We talked about all the different places a Painter can be hired to paint and had fun dressing up during circle Time!! We then had a blast painting throughout our classroom. Every inch was theirs to paint!!

 

For art I covered a big area and then let the children pretend they were actually painting the wall. They each made “Mini Masterpieces," and they enjoyed it a lot!! Who knew that painting vertically could be so fun!

I hope you enjoyed our Community Helper Unit as much as we did!! Check back for our Month of Love and Other Emotions for February!!

 

 



Healthy Bodies Week!!

We just had a fun-filled week full of healthy bodies themed activities in my classroom. Here are a few things you may want to check out:

On Monday we ate a healthy snack and talked about things that are healthy and things that are unhealthy. We each shared a healthy food that I drew up on the board.

We read, “The Very Hungry Caterpillar,” by Eric Carle and afterwards talked about the healthy foods the caterpillar ate and the unhealthy foods he ate in a “walk-through the book.”

We water-colored a lunch:

The class picked out their lunch, I helped them cut it out (because they are two and scissors aren’t in our skill-set yet), and they pasted the items into their lunchbox.