This week will have our Valentine Celebration where we exchanged valentine’s cards with our friends and have yummy treats after nap time. We talked about what types of things we can give to others. The children named things like cards, treats, flowers, toys, etc. We talked about how Valentine’s day is celebrated around the world because not everyone celebrates the same way we do and it was interesting to learn.. For example, in South Korea, if you don’t get a gift from someone, you have to eat black noodles! Some countries don’t give gifts but would rather take the other person out to dinner. Ms. Brenda had the children put chocolate and sprinkles on pretzel sticks. We took a vote if we should take them home or eat them here at school and the children voted to take them home because some wanted to give the pretzel to their sibling or parents. This was so sweet of them!
We made a Vv word list, matched heart uppercase letters to lowercase letters, matched uppercase letters, they wrote “I love you, mom and dad” on a big heart, and practiced writing sight words. They also used letter tiles to spell out sight words using the hearts that had the words written on them. They used the Smarties candy to make letters by using the heart alphabet cards as reference.
The children picked a heart number and counted out the number of Smarties candy, played a heart number matching game, and they practiced writing numbers using Smarties candy. We did some simple addition problems using the 2 part cards. They graphed Smarties candy and had to figure out which color had the most and least.
We made a heart worm where they wrote letters of their name on each heart, heart wreath where they had to try to put the wreath in a circle, and a Valentine dog in art. We focused this week on using a little bit of glue and I always tell the children, “Just a dot, not a lot”. Some like to use a lot of glue and I wanted to focus that less is best when it comes to using glue. It’s a great fine motor skill to teach them how to let the glue drip in the glue bottle instead of flinging the glue on the table. The children did great when they saw how much glue was dripping off the brush.
We’ve been talking about taking our time when we do projects or do centers. Some children like to rush through things because they want to go play or they will run in the classroom when we line up because they want to be first. I explained that we should take our time when doing things because mistakes can happen, we could hurt a peer, or even ourselves.
If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to reach out!