Valentine's Day!

Happy Valentine's Day!  A few kids pointed out that today was in fact not Valentine's day.  However, since we don't have school on Saturday we celebrated it today!  This morning was a blast learning about the letter U.  We used a big balloon with a capital U and a small balloon with a lower case u to practice the /u/ sound.  We made the balloon go /u/ /u/ /u/ - UP! and then tossed it to another student to repeat the action.  We also talked about all the words in the mini U book from the Amazing Action Alphabet.  We talked about the family of frogs in the book and acted out all the actions that they do throughout the book.  After snack time each child got a box of heart candies to sort and graph.  We practiced one-to-one counting and determining which color and the most and the least. 

 After math we handed out Valentines to our friends with our decorated Valentine bags and then did a letter review game with balloons.  Each balloon had a letter on it.  The idea of the game was to look at the letter on the balloon and then sing the song about the letter name and sound ("N says /n/, N says /n/, every letter makes a sound, N says /n/").

 This afternoon we read a fun story called "The Day it Rained Hearts".  It's a simple and sweet story about a little girl making Valentine cards out of hearts that rained from the sky. Each child then drew their favorite part and added words to their drawing.  We then took turns sharing our work with the whole class.

 We did our regular guided reading groups today so everyone has 2 new baggy books to be reading.   For math we repeated our lesson from last Wednesday about units and sticks of 10.  Then we got out our math cards and paired up to play the matching game.  PLEASE play this game LOTS at home!

We had a great time playing outside for a bit.  Cheering for kids who completed Ready2Read units, coloring Valentine bags and handing out our Valentines.  It was a great day!

Skinnamarink - A Preschool Presentation

We learn "Skinnamarink" on Valentine's Day in preschool.  We only spend one day on it and this year we have very quiet kids, but here is our best performance: 

Preschool Valentines

We had so much fun on Valentine's Day!  There is a great game in the Valentine Preschool pack with all the CVC words and sight words we've learned throughout the year printed on little heart balloons.  We had those balloons cut out and then taped them onto heart shaped helium balloons.  We ran around the classroom catching balloons and reading the word on them.  Once the word was read we taped it to the white board.  It was such a fun Valentine way to practice our reading!  We also played with the Valentine play dough, decorated Valentine bags and gave Valentines to all our preschool friends!

Toddler Valentines

We had such a great Valentine's Day in tot school this week.  We played all sorts of games and activities, read a zillion books, and did a few great crafts.  The girls loved playing toss with the Valentine heart rice bag.  We played with the rice sensory tray and the Valentine Starfall game.  We enjoyed our Valentine snack with a fancy tablecloth and all. 

 We had some great art activities making love bugs and contact paper hearts.  We ended the day with everyone passing out their Valentines to their friends.  We went one at a time and practiced saying "Happy Valentine's Day!" to each person.  It was so cute!

February Tot Packs

Getting ready for February? Tot Packs are ready for you!

I create all of my lesson plans to share digitally with other homeschooling families and small classrooms.  If your child attends Little Adventures Preschool you can easily supplement their learning at home by downloading the lesson plans.  It will also give you a good idea about what we covered.  I always plan more than we will ever actually get to so there is often a great idea within the plans that you can share with your child to extend their learning.  You can find all of my toddler and preschool lesson plans here:http://www.teachersnotebook.com/shop/LittleAdventuresPreschool
Find the year long theme calendar {here} and follow along with us! This post gives details and pictures of all February Toddler Packs. Be sure to scroll down to see all of them. 

Tot Packs 25-28 Tot packs are about 20 pages in length. They each have 2 pages of activity ideas, book suggestions, and links to the materials I use. You can certainly use all or part of the lesson plans.  The printable pages include songs, matching games, drawing games and other activities. Tot packs are designed to be a first introduction to math concepts, letters, shapes and colors. They are not meant to obtain mastery in any subject. Let them be a guide for educational play between you and your child.

February
{Download all 4 February Tot Packs}

25. Hearts {Download}

Printables in this pack:

Heart Grid Game

My Shapes Book

 Letter G

G is for Gumdrops

 Heart Matching

Gluten Free Play-Dough

 3 Piece Heart Puzzles

 Shape Matching

Heart Lacing

26. Valentine's {Download}

Printables in this pack:

Valentine Play Dough

Shape Memory

Letter U

  Heart Color Sorting

 Valentine 3 Piece Puzzles

 Heart Tick-Tac-Toe

Valentine’s Day Tracing

27. Wheels {Download}

Printables in this pack:

Cutting Skills

Traffic Signs

 Shadow Matching

Size Sequencing

 Writing Your Name

Wheel Tracing

Shape Matching

 Letter Review ( m t a s b h c i l p f j o n d g u )

Color Matching

The Wheels on the Bus

28. Dr. Seuss {Download}

Printables in this pack:

A note about printables: All Dr. Seuss text and figures © and TM Dr. Seuss Enterprises L.P.  All rights reserved.  This pack is short on printables because I do not have rights to the images and will not violate copyright laws.  Please find oodles of printable pages at http://www.seussville.com/Educators/educatorClassroomResources.php?id=printables

Thing 1 and Thing 2 Labels

 Letter R

 A Short History of Dr. Seuss

Pick Up a Book Poem 

Happy Valentine's Day!

Little Adventures Preschool celebrated Valentine's Day on Monday this week.  We started by reading some Valentine stories and then made some crafts from the stories.  We made a game of Tic-Tac-Heart and learned how to play.

 We celebrated A's 4th birthday at snack time with some cupcakes and a song.

 Art time was full of heart shaped handprints

 and Valentine frames.

 The frames served a purpose - they became the targets the all the little cupids got to shoot arrows through.  Take one end of cotton off of a Q-tip and load that end first into the non bendy end of a straw.  Then blow it out!  If you get someone with your love arrow you have to give them a hug!

 It was chaos while the kids where blowing their "Love Arrows" at each other.  They were very entertained by the activity and I need to remember it for next year.

 We continued working on big and little for a bit before moving onto heavy and light.

 We tossed around a light ball for a bit,

 then I pulled out the weights!

Heavy and light is still a tricky concept due to the vocabulary word "light" but we're working on it, and I have a great idea in the works for our class next week to solidify the concept!