Valentines Day!

Heart Canvas

We started our Valentines Day with the heart canvas (so it would have time to dry) which turned out so beautiful. The kids loved picking 3 hearts out of different sizes and finding a spot for them on the canvas. I used the foam dollar store hearts which worked PERFECT for this activity!

I have super sweet boys who used my nice towel to try and clean, lol. I couldn't even be mad because they were trying so hard to be good and helpful:)

Flower Shop

We were running a little behind by the time we were done so our flower shop ended up being just playing with the flowers. They loved sticking them into the floral foam, I just needed more flowers or to cut them into individual flowers to give all three a better way to use the flowers without steeling each others.

Heart Pattern

We used the curriculum heart games with real sweethearts for this activity (a genius idea given to us online!) and the boys enjoyed every second. They got really into the activity before they even ate the hearts, which is kinda a big deal with preschoolers, lol!

I forgot to snap pictures at the time but my son was happy to do it again after his friends left. We did patterns, graph and sorting with these. they were able to tell me which color had the most and least as well.

If you give a moose a muffin and beginning our February activities

To end January we had a day themed around the book "If you give a moose a muffin."

The kids LOVED this theme and reading the other books that went perfectly with it.

After reading our books, we made an "M" book in a muffin shape and then counted muffins to feed the moose for math. Both activities I got off of this website:

http://www.homeschoolshare.com/IFYougiveamoose.php

Puffy Snowman Paint

This painting was a blast for the boys! They just used paintbrushes and hands to create whatever they wanted on their cookie sheets. I wish we could have done this activity much longer as they enjoyed it so much!

Book Popsicle Puppets

(The Little Mouse, the red ripe strawberry and the Big Hungry Bear)

Having made puppets earlier this year I decided to enrich the puppets and make an actual spoon mouse for our little mouse in the book. (This idea came from: http://iheartcraftythings.com/wooden-spoon-mouse-craft-kids.html)

The boys loved the puppets way more and played with them as long as they could before we had to move on.

  

Marbled Heart Garland

Our heart garlands turned out very nice, we just had to make sure to have enough dye in the shaving cream and next time we might make sure our paper is more white than grey to make the colors stand out more as well. I do not have a picture yet but I turned the colored papers into hearts to decorate our preschool room.

Alphabet Book

 For our Alphabet book I used this site's coloring pages to cut out and paste into the boy's literacy books. My goal is to add another letter or two each month and add them into their books until they have the rest of the alphabet.

http://bestcoloringpages.com/my-a-to-z-coloring-book-letter-c-coloring-page_1d2255.html

Bubble Wrap Hopscotch!

This has most definitely been one of our favorite math activities. I got two rolls of bubble wrap at the dollar store and cut both together into about 16 squares to make into our hopscotch. As the boys jumped we counted the numbers and the jumps together.

Bringing back the frames

These frames are a great opening activity as we wait for everyone to arrive so we decided to make pink ones this month for valentines day to hang on the wall.

Our valentines song of the month: H-E-A-R-T to the tune of Bingo!

"There is a shape and it means love and heart is its name-o

HEART, HEART, HEART

and Heart is its name-o!"

(or another ending my daughter taught me:

"a heart shape means I Love You!")

Block Play Labeling

Gross Motor: Walking in lines on tape

Card Match Up

For this math activity we used heart playing cards and heart manipulatives. 

The boys each picked a card, said the number on the card and counted out hearts to put on top of the hearts on the card. Next time we will need to make sure to have either bigger cards or slightly smaller hearts so they fit together better but the boys loved this and it was a great learning activity for them.

Valentines Sensory Bins

Pink rice, red beans, heart shaped cookie cutters and dollar store test tubes

The rice on the left I dyed with vinegar and red dye, the rice on the right I just used dye. The vinegar made it more even in color and vibrant but it still smells like vinegar so not sure what to do about that. It also took a long time to dry so you have to do a very thin layer at a time to dry faster.

We also practiced sweeping up our mess for this activity :)

The dream I thought I had and the dream I never knew I had...

"Follow your dreams and the universe will open doors for you where there were only walls..."

4th grade. It was always 4th grade, or so I thought until this afternoon. 

I realized something today that I had never allowed myself to fully think about. One that has always eaten at my mind but I pushed aside because I thought I wanted something different. I looked at what others had and thought they had everything I was sure at the time I wanted. These dreams had been mine since childhood. For as long as I remembered and I could not allow myself to think anything different. But now that I am allowing myself to engage in my new dream, I realized I have always wanted it. I shaped my whole life around it thinking I was loosing something big and never realizing I was gaining a whole lot more!

I am a mom. A very blessed mom who has the ability at the moment to stay at home with my children. Yes, I am living a frugal life, and I don't always get to grab that extra treat on the shelf, but I don't really feel like I am missing out. You see, because I am a stay at home mom I get to see things I would otherwise miss. Like, that goofy little smile your kid gives you when they feel they have done something awesome (or when they have done something extremely naughty😉) or that time you get to snuggle up on the couch with your kiddos for any reason you want. And yeah, I know I will still have tough days that I will be tempted to think of old dreams because truthfully I will have a 3 year old again and that year is always the year those dreams come back if ya know what I mean, lol. But I will never let this dream get trampled down again, because that what satan wants. He wants you to hold onto dreams that are good but that take you away from the dreams that are great.

And you know what else I realized today. That, because I am a stay at home mom I get to teach preschool and I LIKE it, actually I LOVE it! I never thought I would hear myself say that. But I love to see my sons growth in learning as long as 2 other little ones I get to teach. I NEVER thought that would be part of my new dream but it is, and I LOVE IT! I love being able to teach amazing curriculum that I get to choose myself. I love being my own boss doing what I think is best for these amazing kids. I love taking this curriculum and making it my own and teaching it the way these kids need, which is how this amazing curriculum is written. I love hearing stories about these kids growth at home and what they do at home because of something they learned in my home. That's pretty cool 😄. 

So yeah, teaching rocks. I am so glad I had my first dream of teaching elementary because it led me to the dream I have now. I would have never known this new dream if it hadn't been for my previous dream, and following that dream, and now I am sure this new dream will lead me to other new dreams that I didn't consider before and that is exciting.