Valentines

Last week we had our Valentine's Day Party.  We had so much fun making our valentine bags and passing out our valentines to one another.  We also went upstairs to the church narthex and hunted for hearts.  (Mrs. Chyko hid them) Once we found our hearts we counted them up, we had 11, and then we went to surprise the church secretaries and gave them our hearts!  Mrs. Candy and Mrs. Diane were so surprised and of course Mrs. Diane gave each of us a tootsie roll.  (She always keeps them on her desk just for occassions  like these!)  We had heard the book Heartprints earlier in the week and we talked about how we left hearptirnts when we gave our hearts to the secretaries.  The kids said their hearts felt happy because they surprised Mrs. Diane and Mrs. Candy. It was cool to see that they understood that heartprints work both ways, in giving and receiving!!  When we came back downstairs we had our Valentine Treats. Thank you to everyone who sent something in, the kids had a great time frosting and decorating their cookies, eating tutti frutti popcorn and drinking red fruit punch.

  

During art time we used celery and red paint to stamp a valentine rose and make a valentine.  This was also a great writing activity for the kids. Since we have different ages in our class some tried to write Happy Valentine's Day or I Love You by themselves inside the card, some wanted to write just a few letters or their names, some wanted to trace dotted words and some learned about writing by watching as I wrote and spelled the words out in front of them  

We talked about shapes this past week, especially hearts!  We heard a great book that was illustrated with hearts making lots of different animals!

 We practiced sorting, counting and graphing with coins and candy hearts this week.  We made a class graph with coins and the next day we made our own graph using candy hearts.  

We passed a heart around and sang a song while we were passing. Whoever was holding the heart when the singing stopped had to sit in the middle. Then we passed the heart around faster and faster until eventually everyone was sitting inside the circle!!  There was lots of giggles during this.  The words to the song went like this "Pass the heart around, pass the heart around for Valentine's Day, when the music stops, when the music stops....who has the heart today?"  It might be fun to see if your child remembers how to sing and play the game.  S/he might even be able to teach you how to play it at home!!

Finally we wrote a story about hearts.  Here it is:  

Each child added something to the story.  See if your child remembers which line s/he wrote!!