My boys are probably ready to throw-up with all the pink & red & hearts I have surrounded them with, but I just couldn’t pass up all these heart-tastic ideas I found in the blogosphere. They even brought out a little of my own creativity. First off, I knew I couldn’t introduce these activities at home – it just wouldn’t have flown with my boys. They were so mad at me for making them use pink & purple construction paper for their letter P collages this week. So, I hit them with it where they least expected it – My Preschool Class at our enrichment groups (which also only has 2 girls). Before I get started, here are links to my inspiration:
I have 10 preschooler’s in my Preschool Hour class, so I set up 2 tables for 5 kids at each. Each place setting had an activity for them to rotate through & I also had 2 extra floor activities for those that finished early. Here is what our hour together looked like:
Station 1: PINK Rice Play with spooning & pouring
Station 2 & 3: Counting
I drew hearts on a 12x12 white paper & wrote numbers 0-9 on inside a heart. The kids were to add (counting) the matching amount of heart candies. The station across from this was the same idea, but inside muffin cups.
Station 4: Order sequence: Biggest to smallest/Smallest to biggest
This is not a very good picture, but this station had a pink index card with about 5 different sizes of foam hearts. The kids practiced arranging them from smallest to biggest in a straight line & also had fun stacking them on top of each other.
Station 5, 6, & 7: Sorting foam hearts & pom-poms
At these stations the kids were to sort the hearts/pom-poms by color then size. To add a little motor skills to it they used miniature tongs or spoon (both from IKEA) to transfer them.
Station 8 & 9: Finger-painting & drawing in the sand
At theses stations the kids practiced making hearts & their names.
Station 10 & 11: Patterns & motor skills
Here the kids used 3 different colors of foam hearts to make a pattern onto a paint tray. The other station was also a pattern station, but to make it a little more challenging they practiced by putting 3 different colored paper-clips onto a pink foam sheet.
Station 12: Name Search
If the kids got done early at one of the simpler stations I had a row of hearts with each of their names on one of them. The kids practiced recognizing their names by searching for their heart. (*Next week I will do it turned over as a guessing game)
For the tot’s in the nursery I I keyed it down a bit to their level. Their table consisted of water play, sand play with a heart shaped cookie cutter, rice play (please note the eating the rice was NOT part of the activity!), sorting the hearts by color, spooning pom-poms & transferring them into mini heart shaped ice-cube trays.
The kids absolutely loved these activities! In fact, my boys had so much fun they forgot all about being surrounded in pink!
Check back next week to see what other fun Valentine activities we do!
