H IS FOR HEART - WEEK ONE

~Punkin is 30 months old.~

Theme: Hearts
Letter: Hh
Number: 10
Shape: Heart
Color: Pink
Books:

We had a very busy week around here. I subbed two days at the school I used to teach at, so Punkin was with Grandma Joy those 2 days. Then, Tuesday turned into a rather spur of the moment shopping trip / "Girls Day Out" with a couple close friends that I hadn't spent time with in a while. Then, we had our normal Mom 2 Mom group Thursday morning, and a quick meeting Friday morning with a friend at McDonald's. BUT in spite of all that, we actually were able to accomplish quite a bit due to the fact that Punkin was very motivated by our theme of hearts and so we found ways to sneak in activities at random times. We had so much fun, and I have so many fun Heart ideas left, so we will continue next week with our H is for Heart theme.

TOT TRAYS

We only got to do one day of Tot Tray time, and Punkin wanted to play with her new Valentine Sensory Bin the whole time, so that is the only one I got pictures of her doing. I did take pictures of all the others, though, and since we are doing H is for Hearts again next week, I'll leave them out for her, and hopefully we'll have more time to do them.

She really loves sensory bins. I threw in a little clasp purse, and she spent a great deal of time filling that with "treasures" from her bin and opening and closing it to put stuff in and dump stuff out.

Heart foam stickers on red paper.

Pipe cleaner beading / patterning (If I tell her we'll be making a bracelet, she'll be very into it).

One to one matching using candy hearts and this cute "Fill My Heart" page that I got from the WONDERFUL Valentine Unit download at Musings of Me. (You've GOT to check out her great downloads!)

Tweezing magnetic pom poms to fill heart cookie cutters.

Magnetic foam hearts

LEARNING ACTIVITIES

I printed off these heart matching cards from HERE and we did a simple visual discrimination matching activity. Some look pretty similar, so she had to really notice the differences other than color. She loves to use to her pocket chart lately, so we've been doing a lot of matching activities.

We've been working on cutting a lot lately, but we've basically been doing "snipping" pieces of paper to get the idea of opening and closing the scissors. This week, I printed out this cute cutting page from another great Valentine Unit at Lawteedah. I didn't know how she would do cutting on the lines, but she did great! She kept asking for more cutting. Later that evening when Grandma Faith was babysitting, Punkin took Grandma to the closet where she knew the scissors were and asked Grandma to get them for her so she could cut. When I got home, they were sitting on the couch cutting away at scrap paper. Grandma said they'd been doing that for quite some time!

We made an h with foam hearts stuck to contact paper. I then covered it with another piece of contact paper and cut out the h. It turned out so cute! I know I just saw this idea on another tot school blog just a short time ago using the letter P, but I can't remember which one that was....so if that was you, please let me know!

I cut out heart shapes and numbered them. I had Punkin put them in number order (which has become a pretty easy task for her....up to 10), and then, we turned them over in order to find a special word (her name). This idea came from The Activity Mom.

Punkin enjoyed it so much that we did it also with her 3 sight words we've been working on - dog, sun, cat. (Again, I randomly picked those to start with because she was interested in them one day while reading in a book. I'll start using the list from 1+1+1=1 or a dolch list as soon as I feel she is ready to move on.)

We worked on color words and upper to lower case letter matching using these heart color word pages from Making Learning Fun. She still LOVES this kind of activity.

She used her brown do a dot marker (to pretend they were chocolates) to mark the letter of the sound that I gave her onto these heart candy box pages from Making Learning Fun.

She worked really hard to color the hearts the right color on this page from yet ANOTHER great Valentine Unit download I found at Moo Moo's Tutus. (Scroll to the bottom of the post to see the download.) The words were written in color, so that helped her "read" the words, but she'd "read" it, pick out the color from her crayon box, and color that heart all by herself. We had to hang it on the refrigerator for Daddy to see. :)

And we did this color page from the unit over at Musings of Me. It took her awhile to grasp coloring JUST the one in that row. She wanted to color ALL the envelopes gray,and ALL the puffy hearts purple.....which wouldn't have been bad, but I was trying to teach her this new skill of looking at just one row at a time. Sometimes I had to cover up the other rows while she worked.

We attempted to do a heart sorting and graphing activity. (The sorting page came from PreKinders and the graphing page came from 2TeachingMommies.) She did the sorting part great, but wasn't as keen on the graphing. I had to help her a LOT. I think she was getting tired, though, that day, because we had been doing a lot of heart activities, so we stopped for the day, and I think I'll bring it out to try again next week. (By the way, this is the first time we've used candy hearts, so she doesn't KNOW they are edible and yummy....yet! She thinks they are just cute little hearts. If she knew, we'd never have enough left to do any of our activities, and we still have a lot to do next week. I think I'll tell her on the last day and let her taste a FEW. LOL!)

I quick made this heart number search page one day to help her identify numbers 10-12. (We've been working a lot on double digit numbers 10-12, namely 10 this week, and she is getting pretty good at identifying them now.) We used a different color for each number.

Punkin LOVED this activity....I think because she loves to line things up in rows. I gave her the 6-10 number boxes page from Confessions of a Homeschooler and had her use candy hearts to count out into the boxes.

This was the hit of the week. I found these heart shaped "boxes" at the Dollart Tree. They had little sayings on them, but I covered them up with stickers which I wrote numbers 1-9 on (it only came with 9...I should have gotten two packages). First I had her simply pick one from the bowl, open it, and count that many hearts into the container. (And without me telling her to, she was very particular about making sure she used all of the same color for each box. It had to be all pinks in one or all yellows in another, etc....No mixing of colors!)

Then, she used her fine motor skills to position the lids just right to make them go back on.....which was a bit difficult, but she was determined!

Then, I had her line them up in number order. I then wanted her to open them and dump out the candy hearts, but she insisted they stay in the heart boxes. So, next week, I'll take the stickers off the top and have her open each one and count how many in each and match it to the correct number.

Punkin counted the hearts on each card and matched it to the correct number on the page.....BUT before she did that, she insisted on lining the cards all up in a line (upside down). Then, she put them all in a pile, still upside down, and she "drew" one from the pile so it was a surprise which one she picked. Yes, she is getting very particular these days as to how SHE wants to do things..... :) This came from the Valentine Unit at Lawteedah.

Size ordering hearts from Confessions of a Homeschooler. I used to have to give her just 3 or 4 at a time, but she can do them all very easily now on her own .... big to small AND small to big.

ARTS, CRAFTS, AND OTHER FUN

We attempted to sponge paint with heart "doilies" but Punkin wanted to paint the WHOLE paper. I was trying to keep the paint under control, so I didn't get a picture of her actually doing it. Surprisingly to me, the part taped down by the heart doily didn't bleed underneath and it actually turned out well, so I just cut that part out (the rest of the page was solid pink), and we made a "card" for Daddy.

We marbled painted some hearts using red, white, and pink, then made a heart garland for our fireplace. Punkin LOVES marble painting!

Making Heart Jello Jigglers. Yum!

I had some leftover sugar cookie dough that you are supposed to just pull apart and put on a tray to bake. But I smooshed each little part onto a cookie sheet and let Punkin cut a heart out of each one. They did kinda stick to the pan when they were baked and some broke apart trying to get them off to eat, but she didn't seem to care......she just wanted to eat cookies no matter what the shape!

MISC.

And here was our lunch one day. (Sorry it is sideways. I can't get it to rotate for some reason.)

We got a heart balloon for Daddy one day on one of our outings, but it didn't take Punkin long to claim it as her very own. She had to stand on tippy toes to reach the string, but she had a ball "chasing" the balloon around the house all day......and she got mad at anyone who tried to touch HER balloon. Sorry Daddy! Guess we'll have to get you another one! :)

And this is still how she chooses to spend almost every free second she has .... building "houses" with her big blocks. She could do this for hours on end!

Join us next week for another week of H is for Heart activities! In the meantime, check out 1+1+1=1 for more fun ideas!