Valentine Favors

Just thought I'd share some simple Valentine favors I made for a recent Valentine's Day party we hosted.
I've made recycled crayons before (click here for my tutorial), but I was recently inspired by an old high school friend to make these heart shaped ones.

I used a silicone mold, which made for easy removal and clean-up.

I added a few chocolate kisses and a little tag to a baggie and voila! a little party favor full of love. :)

Another idea for an easy homemade Valentine would be to package some chocolate scented playdough in a small toss away container and attach a little heart shaped cookie cutter to the tag.

UPDATED: I just did a quick search in my Reader and saw that Frugal Family Fun made some crayon favors last month. Take a look at Valerie's link to see the adorable packaging she created for favors!

~Thank you for your comments!~

Art Basket

I LOVE arts and crafts. I could spend all day cutting, coloring, painting, gluing, making collages, and so on and so on. Unfortunately (for me), my little guy has not inherited my enthusiasm for crafts. Oh, he'll humor me and dab a glob of glue on something and he'll paint for several minutes, but without my encouragement, he'd rather do anything else.

I really believe there are tremendous benefits in cultivating a child's creative side. There's so much one can learn and express through art. So, I've been trying to find some new ways to make art interesting to James and one idea was to create an art basket.

This basket contains all sorts of things with which James can make Valentines.

I must point out that this idea is not my own - it comes from the lovely Nicole, of Tired, Need Sleep, who creates art boxes for her son. She also created a wonderful blog carnival called, The Art Box. She's since discontinued the carnival, but be sure to check her old posts - lots of creative fun!

I'm hoping by giving James free reign with a wide variety of art materials, he'll find his "inner art lover" and I'll find myself swept up in days of blissful artsy-ness. :D (Well, it doesn't hurt to dream, right?) And if all goes well with this basket, I may just create a monthly art basket going forward.

~Thank you for your comments!~

On Our Shelves - February

Like most, our theme for February is Valentine's Day. You can click here to see posts of all the fun things we did last year (when James was 2 & 3/4 years old).

Practical Life
Tweezing Roses. This idea comes from My Montessori Journey. I made these out of felt - click here to see my tutorial.

Weaving Ribbons.

Pouring Confetti Hearts.

Lacing Beads. James really likes this work and it's one we've done a few different times - I just adjust the colors to match our theme.

Open & Close Basket. Always a favorite in our home. There are little heart shaped erasers inside each container.

Buttoning Hearts. This is the same one I made last February. As you can see, it's very similar to our button snake.

Polishing Wood. I'll write more about this soon.

Sensorial

Red Sensory Tub.

Chocolate Playdough.

Smelling Bottles.

Still on our shelves: Baric Tablets, the Pink Tower, Geometric Solids, Knobbed & Knobless Cylinders.

Language
Moveable Alphabet. I think this is my favorite of all Montessori materials. James loves spelling out words.
I've added some of the objects from our alphabet box to make it even more fun.

Tracing. I found these great printables from Confessions of a Homeschooler. Be sure to check out the link - she has loads of Valentine's Day printables.

Sequencing Hearts. I cut these hearts out of foam paper. I'll create a pattern for James and he'll finish it.

Fine Motor w/ Beads. I really didn't know where to categorize this work, but I thought since it focuses on the pincer grasp (the same used in writing) I'd put it under Language. Anyway, this is actually a connect four type of game (I found at our local fair trade store) and if James is interested I'll teach him how to play it.

Blue Series Work. I have to admit, I haven't been focusing on this as much as I originally thought I would. Not sure why. So, we're still working our way through it all.

Dot Stamping the Letter V. Printable from here.

Valentine Poetry Basket. I'll write more about this later in the week.

Books:
Mouse's First Valentine, by Lauren Thompson
Little Mouse's Big Valentine, by Thacher Hurd
Valentine Mice!, by Bethany Roberts
Arthur's Valentine, by Marc Brown
The Snowy Day, by Ezra Jack Keats
I purchased all of these at our local second hand store. With the exception of The Snowy Day, which I love, I have to say, none of these books are all that great and I think a couple of them may even be out of print. I also thought it was funny that three of the books focus on mice... I had no idea mice were so connected with Valentine's Day! :)

Math
Cards & Counters. Heart shaped cards and 55 pink buttons as counters.

Addition Heart Game. To play this game James will roll the die and then put the correct number of white hearts into the muffin tin (one for each cup), then he'll roll the die again and put the correct number of red hearts into the tin. He'll then add up all the hearts to find the sum.

Matching Heart Cards. We had this on our shelves last year, too. This year I plan to point out to James that the number of hearts on the card matches the numeral shown.

Graphing Hearts. I found this graph/idea on Kidssoup. I've filled the little heart shaped box with small conversation candy hearts and once James places them on the grid he'll be able to count them and see which colors have more/less.

Still on our shelves: Sandpaper Numerals, Red & Blue Rods, and The Hundreds Board.

Science & Culture
Outer Space. You have no idea what a huge hit our space unit was with James! He loved it all and so I've decided to extend our study of outer space for the month of February.

Still on our shelves: North America Continent Bag.

Art & Music
Composer of the Month: Johann Strauss.

Stamping Hearts. James is crazy about stamps and in this case instead of a self-inking stamper, he'll need to use a little ink pad.

Scissor Practice. To make these I simply put heart stickers on white strips of paper. James will use the heart stickers as guide and cut in between them. The bowl is for the cut bits.

Painting Watercolor Hearts.

Art Basket.

Still on our shelves: Instrument Nomenclature Cards.

I'm linking this post up to The Preschool Corner.

~Thank you for your comments!~

February Sensory Tub & Playdough - Valentines Day

Like last February's tub, I created this one with Valentine's Day in mind, except this time around I went with all red.

What's inside: I won't detail everything that's in the tub since, as you can see, there's quite a lot. I pretty much tossed in any red thing I could find!
:: LOTS of pony beads (these were the same I used for our 4th of July tub)
:: Pom-poms
:: Popsicle sticks
:: Fruit erasers
:: Various beads
:: Felted balls
:: Water filled stars (these are reusable ice cubes)
:: Buttons
:: Feathers
:: Silk flowers
:: Knitted apples

I made some I Spy cards to go along with it. We did this same thing in August with our yellow sensory tub and it was a huge success.

Chocoloate Playdough
With some real cocoa added to it, this playdough smells nearly good enough to eat! I made chocolate playdough last year, too, but this year I've added an empty chocolate box for James to make pretend chocolates. I have to confess, my friends, a great sacrifice went into doing this.... I had to eat all of the real chocolates in order to provide this fun extension for my son. Sigh... the things we do for our children. ;)

~Thank you for your comments!~

Felt Rose Tutorial

I'm delighted so many of you were interested in my doing this tutorial! These little rose buds are SO easy to make!

Oh and let me just say up front that I am in no way shape or form an expert in sewing - please let me know if you have any questions.

Ok, let's get started! Here's what you'll need:

• A 2" wide x 10" long strip of red felt (I used Eco-fi, but 100% wool would be lovely too!)
• A 3.5" x 3.5" block of green felt
• Red thread
• Green thread (or invisible thread - I started using this, but had a hard time working with it since I could barely see the thread... guess that's the point though!).
• A needle
• A pair of scissors

:: First, take the red strip of felt and with your scissors create scallops along one side. Create small scallops first and then at about the halfway point make the scallops larger (these will be your outer petals).
:: Next, create the leaves by folding your green felt block in half and cutting out identical leaf shapes that should end up being about 2" long x 1" wide.

:: Make your rosebud by rolling the red felt strip scalloped side up, starting with the small scallops. You may need to re-roll a few times to get the overlapping petals look.

:: Using your red thread and holding the rosebud firmly in your hand, begin sewing the bottom of it. I know, my stitching is pretty random. It takes a lot of stitches to secure the many layers of the rosebud. I'm sure there's an easier, nicer looking way of stitching this, but this novice is not that skilled. Also this part gets covered by the leaves anyway.

:: After you've stitched the rosebud, prepare your leaves. Overlap them slightly and with your green thread stitch them together.

:: Next you'll attach the leaves to the base of the rosebud. First, line up the middle of the leaves with the bottom of the rosebud. Then pulling back the leaves slightly, thread the needle through the middle bottom of the rosebud into the leaves. Keep doing this until the two are well connected.

:: Then move onto the edge of the rosebud. This part can be a little tricky. What I do is a little something I like to call "tuck and stitch". :) Thread the needle at the very base of the flower and "tuck it" into the leaves. Do this all the way around the rosebud, trying your best to tuck deeply so no green thread will appear on the flower. (Here is where the invisible thread would work nicely.)

:: Now that your flower is nearly complete, there's just one last thing to do. Flatten the rose petals outward to create that "opening bud" look.

That's it! You now have a sweet little rosebud. :)

I made a dozen of these to use for a Valentine's Day Montessori activity.

Valentine's Activities - Letters & Language

Books
I highly recommend each of these books, especially Love You Forever... I challenge you to not cry - or at the very least get a little misty-eyed - while reading this book. Such a sweet story and one of my favorites.

Letters/Language
Matching letters to objects. This is similar to one of our alphabet drawers only in this case I collected small red things to be matched with the sound of the corresponding first letter (eg. triangle begins with 't').

Creating letters with Wikki Stix. I drew the letters L-O-V-E on index cards and laminated them so the Wikkis would stick a little better. :) The idea is for James to bend the Wikkis into each letter.

Matching letters with dot stampers. For this activity, James would take a letter circle from the bowl, find the match on the sheet of paper and then use the red stamper to mark it off. Sort of like letter bingo! :)

Sequencing the alphabet using heart cut-outs. Like most kids, James has the alphabet song memorized, but I'm curious to know if he can sequence the letters visually, too.

Name spelling using foam letters, I took a photo of them spelling out James' name with the idea being he'll match the actual foam letters to the ones in the photo.

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I realized I forgot to add this to my math post:

Number recognition using a "parking lot" and red, pink and purple cars! This idea comes from My Montessori Journey (can you tell how much I love her blog?!). James thought this was pretty darn cool. He's going through a sensitive period with numbers right now, so while he knows these numbers well, I want to continue to indulge his interest them.

For more Valentine fun, check out my other posts:
Valentine's Activities - Math & Misc.
Valentine's Activities - Montessori
Sensory Fun - Valentine's Style