Our Valentine's Day Fun 2011

Our Valentine's Day activities have been ongoing for about a week now. We managed to get more than our moneys worth using conversation hearts in various activities. We decorated hearts and used them to decorate a Valentine Tree for our door.

We have patterned, sorted, counted and played math games with conversation heart erasers.

Each child brought in a tissue box to wrap, decorate and use as a Valentine holder. We wrapped them in bulletin board paper, which was great fine motor practice.

Let the creative juices flow!

Leave it to the teacher to forget to bring a box for herself until the very last minute! I missed the sticker frenzy by waiting so long and most of the stickers were gone, so I decided to add a little paint to tie mine into our postal theme.

I have several students still struggling with writing their own name. I thought it would be good practice for the kids to write their own name on their Valentine cards. We didn't address the cards to a recipient, which made for much easier delivery.

For our gifts to the parents, we made refrigerator magnet art, using Crayola Model Magic. We cut shapes with cookie cutters and let them dry for a few days.

We painted them with watercolor paints and glued magnets to the back.

We dipped our cookie cutters in pinks, reds and blues to decorate bags to wrap them in.

During nap, I ran out to pick up a few last minute party items. To occupy a few of our non-sleepers, my assistant allowed them to put some finishing touches on their gift bags. Apparently, after finishing the wrapping, they decided Ms. Tiffany needed a new hairdo for the party! (She's such a good sport, she even made sure everyone who wanted a turn had a little portion of hair to "fix"! :)

Much to our surprise, one of our dads belongs to a barbershop quartet. He and his group surprised us with a serenade. It happened so fast that by the time I realized what was happening, got the camera and got the video mode switched on, the song was almost over, but I'll include the clip here to show how good they were!

For Valentine party snacks, we had a frosted cookie and a few Cheetos Puffs, but had requested mostly healthy items, so we snacked well, but healthily.

My friend, Mia and her snack: "Look, Mrs. Ayn, I made a happy plate!"

Hope your Valentine's Day was as happy as ours! :)