Valentine Card Mailboxes

Every year, I ask each family to work together to create a "mailbox" to hold all their Valentine cards. Our families are really creative and have a great time working together. The kids can't wait to bring them and share with the class how they made them!

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Preschool Valentine and Heart Activities and Art

I know that technically yesterday was Valentine's Day, but many in our part of the US have been without power and out of school due to fierce winter storms. Our holiday celebrations have been postponed until later next week. We've decided to go ahead with them, since the kids were so excited and will be really let down if we have to miss them altogether. Since I know many place will be doing the same, I thought I'd go ahead and share the posts I'd originally planned to post about Valentine's Day before we lost power. 

We take advantage of seasonal materials when they come out--especially at the dollar store. I stocked up on heart shaped jewels, Valentine erasers, doilies, Valentine's cards, Conversation Heart candies and Valentine puzzles to put in the various centers in our class. 

The kids love playing with the erasers and jewels that I put in our math center. We do patterning counting matching and a wide variety of games with them. 

I drew a tic tac toe board on a few paper hearts and taught the kids how to play tic tac toe. It's easy to forget that with our digital age many children have never been exposed to it before. It'a a fun little game that is short enough to keep their interest, and can really hone those critical thinking skills!

We use Conversation heart candies in a variety of ways---we graph them, count the letters in them, sort by color, use them in science experiments and even paint with them! One of the ways we've used them this week is by using our magnifying glasses and doing letter hunts with them! The children have been busily writing their conversations from the hearts, comparing who has certain letters and finding letters from their names!

In our art center, we added some heart shaped paper and children free painted and practiced some new techniques, pressing the sides of the heart together to make symmetrical art.

Some kids just enjoyed drawing hearts and cutting them out with fancy scissors.

I bent some of our toilet paper tubes slightly to make heart shapes to dip in paint and stamp with. Some of them started stamping but ended up painting with the stamps as brushes.

Our one year old class made these cute hand and footprint cards for parents. So cute!

Of course we read lots of fun books about Valentine's Day! Here are some of our favorites:




I've added a new tab to the to of the page for books by theme. I'll be adding to this list as I go through the year! 

little illuminations: Books by Theme

If you are interested in more of our Valentine's activities, here are the links to some of my previous posts about our Valentine activities!

Valentine Bulletin Boards 2014

Valentine Fun in Pre-K

Valentine's Day Afterglow

Love Bugs

Our Valentine's Day Fun 2011

Conversation Hearts in The Class

Love Bugs 2011

Valentine's Box

Valentine's Day Fun

plus, look for the last 2 posts in later this week--one on Valentine Boxes and one about Valentine's Day fingerplays and flannelboards!

Be sure to check out my Valentine's Day board on Pinterest!





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Valentine's Day Bulletin Boards 2014

I get TONS of emails and comments about all of my bulletin board posts, so I wanted to share some of my bulletin boards (and some from other classes, as well) for Valentine's Day!

Head Over Heels for You

Pre-K Valentine Tree

Catch The Love Bug

Sweet Treats

Sealed With A Kiss

Sending Love

Sweethearts Candy

We Love Our Class

Jump Rope 4 Heart

Fun Window Decorations

Love Bugs

Bee Mine

Hanging Hearts

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Valentine Fun in Pre-K

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY!!!!

I wanted to share a few little tidbits from some of our Valentine's activities this week. We celebrate the day with a focus on friendship and family love with a card exchange and a few special treats for snack. 

I asked each family to work together to create a box to serve as a card holder for all those Valentine cards we exchange. Some of the families were VERY creative and came up with some wonderful boxes! 

Valentine Cruise Ship

Rock and Roll Guitar

 Princess Ballerina Box

Valentine Hearts 

 Princess Stickers

 Dirtbike Love

 Ladybug Love

 Mailbox

 Big Mouth Princess

 Pom Pom Collage

 Dora the Explorer Stickers and Smileys

 Glittery Hearts

 Lego Love

 Shark!

 Lots of Hearts

Recycled Soda Bottle Pig

We also had a few really cute homemade Valentine cards.

While I was out one day this week, some of the kids made these cute little love bugs to decorate our classroom door.

My students were VERY generous sharing all sorts of lovely Valentines gifts with me, but this little Valentine heart that one of my students made in art center definitely tugged at my heartstrings! It reads: 

"Dear Mrs. Ayn, You are the best teacher in the whole, wide world.Love, Kaitlyn"

Definitely a keeper for the scrapbook!

Another child drawing in art center made this little picture. "Look Mrs. Ayn, I made a love pattern! It's heart-"I"-heart-"I"-heart-"I"!

We've done a lot of math activities this week with Conversation Hearts. We've sorted, patterned and graphed them. We've read them and practiced reading and writing the conversations. This morning, estimated the number of hearts in a a heart shaped box then counted them out to check our guesses.

Later, we counted the number of letters on our hearts and graphed the results.

We've done a lot of singing and dancing this week. Today, with all the excitement building for the the party, we need to get some serious wiggles out. We put on "Love Shack" and started dancing our hearts out. Several of the kids grabbed a partner and started to do little waltzes. I would have never thought to waltz to "Love Shack", but sometimes, love just happens!

Hope your Valentine's Day was just a special as mine! 


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