Roses Are Red, Hearts Are Too

So, Valentine's Day is tomorrow. Anyone who truly knows me, knows that I'm a bit of a "Last Minute Louie." There's something about the pressure of knowing that something has a finite time when it must be finished that gets me focused and working. But for Valentine's Day I planned to not be rushing around at the last minute getting everything done. I promise, I had materials for all of my projects weeks in advance. We had no plans last weekend and everything was laid out for a Valentine's Extravaganza. And then, the dreaded stomach virus hit our home and hit it hard. I didn't even escape this time, like I usually do. So my Valentine's plans were put on hold, but throughout the week we've managed to get through our projects as well as lots of laundry and disinfecting. Of course, the foot of snow and two extra days off, did a lot to help me get back on track.

Now, I understand that many of you probably plan ahead and are covered for tomorrow, but just in case you need a little extra or just want to see what we've been up to, here are some cute things we've been working on. You could always save these ideas for next year, right?

First we made heart paper plate hats. This idea was from Pinterest, with whom I have a love hate relationship for many reasons, which I will not go into right now. It's getting late and who knows how much uninterrupted sleep I'll get tonight. This activity is really easy. We painted plain white paper plates Valentine's colors. My daughter painted hers pink and my son painted his red.

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We let them dry for about 5 days before we were able to fold and cut them, but really they dried within a few hours. Then I folded and cut them according to the pictures below to get a cute pop up heart hat.

Here's my daughter's hat.

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Here's my son's hat.

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We also worked on some really cute Valentine's Day votives made from glass jars and tissue paper. This idea was also from Pinterest and I followed the instructions from Homemade Serenity.

For this project, I used liquid starch (which I had to buy), used and cleaned jelly jars (look I'm recycling), tissue paper, and paint brushes.

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First, I cut some light pink tissue paper into small squares. You can use white or another light color. Then cut hearts out of pink and red tissue paper. Next my kids used the liquid starch to paint the light pink squares onto the sides of the jars.

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I had to hold it for my two year old daughter, but she was more than happy to paint the squares. She actually put too much liquid on some of the squares and they ripped, but we just covered up the tears with more tissue paper. It's kinda messy, so I would definitely recommend putting down newspaper before painting.

After the sides of the jar are covered with the starchy light tissue paper, then you can add some hearts on top. Paint them so that they stick.

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When you are finished decorating them, then let them dry. We just finished this project before bedtime tonight so the larger jars are still drying, but the little guy was pretty dry.

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They make cute little votives if you stick a candle down in them, but I also thought they might make a great vase, especially if you have a bigger jar.

I also finished up a Valentine's korker bow for my littlest Valentine to wear tomorrow.

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Tomorrow, the plan is to finish up Valentine's for my son's class party next Tuesday. His party was supposed to be today, but the snow pushed it off to next week, which actually worked out well for me. The idea for the Valentine's we are making this year came from Parents Magazine. I love the way they are turning out! Here are some samples I've been working on.

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I can't wait to spend another snow day with my little and big Valentine's tomorrow. I'm also looking forward to a big plate of heart shaped blueberry pancakes!

Valentine's Books to Love

Valentine's Day is just around the corner. Two days away to be exact, so we had a little bit of a Valentine's Day reading marathon in our house tonight before bed. Here are a few of our favorites.

1) Will You Be My Valenswine?  written by Teresa Bateman and illustrated by Kristina Stephenson.

Poor little Polly searches high and low for a Valenswine to call her own. Little does she know her very own Valenswine is right under her nose. Written in rhyme and a very sweet read. My four year old son figured out who her Valenswine would be about halfway through. See if you can figure it out too.

2) The Best Thing About Valentines written by Eleanor Hudson and illustrated by Mary C. Melcher.

Another book full of rhymes, this is a great short read for your littlest loves. It would be a great book to read before making Valentine cards to hand out to friends or family.

3) The Night Before Valentine's Day written by Natasha Wing and illustrated by Heidi Petach.

Another rhyming book, I promise they aren't all rhyming books, that follows the Night Before Christmas pattern with a fun story about children getting ready to celebrate Valentine's Day at school. My kindergarten students love these stories for each holiday and the beginning of school.

4) Franklin's Valentines written by Paulette Bourgeois and illustrated by Brenda Clark.

Franklin takes his time and makes thoughtful Valentines for all of his friends at school only to have them fall out of his backpack on the way to the bus. Oops! My son spotted the problem right away. Franklin, of course, was very upset to have lost his Valentines and was worried that his friends might not want to exchange Valentines with him if he didn't have any to give. This story has a great message about giving to friends. Your little one will love how Franklin responds to his friends' kindness.

Franklin's Valentines
$5.59
By Paulette Bourgeois
Buy on Amazon

5) I Spy I Love You riddles by Jean Marzollo and photographs by Walter Wick.

If your child loves I Spy as much as my little ones do, then they are in for a treat. I will say this one has some tricky hidden images to find, even my grown up eyes had to do some serious searching. But there is a good mixture of easy and more challenging objects to find. My two year old daughter just likes to point out things that she knows in the pictures, while my son will search for minutes until he finds what he's hunting for. I especially like the letter and rhyming riddles at the end of the book.

6) Roses Are Pink, Your Feet Really Stink by Diane de Groat.

I saved my favorite for last. I LOVE Diane de Groat! I especially love her series about Gilbert the opossum. In this story Gilbert must write Valentine's for each of his classmates, but chooses to write some not so nice ones to the students in his class who have previously wronged him. Find out what happens when his friends find out he wrote unkind things. 

I hope you enjoy some great books with the one's you love this Valentine's Day. I'd love for you to share your favorite books about love in the comments below!

Knock Their Socks Off

How many times have you lost a sock to the fictitious sock eating monster that lives in the washing machine? With 5 people in my family growing up we lost quite a few and I remember we had a large shoe box filled with socks that lost their mates called "the sock box". I also remember "the sock box" being quite full at all times.

As an adult doing laundry for four, I have vowed to keep up with the sock matching and putting away, but as I looked at the top of my dryer about a week ago (that's my space for unmatching socks) I found myself slipping. Perhaps it's the fact that I never seem to see the bottom of the laundry pile that keeps me from finding all of the matches or the fact that my son and daughter both have lots of crazy colored and patterned socks, but I thought wouldn't matching socks be a fun game?

Okay so it's a chore for us parents and to be honest, my son was a little skeptical, but for my daughter this was a really fun game. Matching socks is also educational. No, seriously, it is. One of the first math concepts we teach our students in kindergarten at the beginning of the year is sorting. And we usually begin our sorting unit with visual discrimination a.k.a. how are things alike and different. Also, having your children sort the socks will likely shave about 10-15 minutes off your laundry time, so it's definitely worth it right?

First, I collected interesting looking socks into a basket. By interesting I mean colorful, patterned and textured. I picked a couple plain white or black ones here and there, but I didn't put all of the socks I washed into the basket. Honestly it was more of my daughter and son's socks than anything. Kid socks are by far more fun than my husbands boring black and white socks. Sorry honey!

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I chose a decently small basket, no need to be overwhelming and filled it in 3 or 4 loads. I started by dumping the basket upside down on the floor. I told my son we were going to talk about socks and at first I think he thought I was crazy. I got him to pick out two socks and hold them in his hands.

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I thought for sure he was going to go for two socks that were the same, but he picked out two completely different and very girly socks. I asked him how they were different first, because they were obviously different. He said, "one is white with orange and the other has pink and white strips." Then I asked how they were alike and he replied, "they both have white." I was excited to see him make the connection about how they were alike in one small way despite their glaring differences. I find that sometimes children get so hung up on the differences, that they have a difficult time seeing the similarities. I had him pick out two more socks and we repeated this a few times with different mixed pairs. I found it interesting that he never picked up a pair of matching socks until I asked him to find socks that were exactly alike.

Next we found the matches and stacked them on top of each other. My almost two year old daughter was actually quite good at this. I tried to be silly a few times and match socks that were the same size but had different patterns or ones that were the same color but different sizes, but that sent my son into a fit of giggles. "No Mommy, they're not the same." Here are some of our matches.

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After we laid out all of the matches, I showed my son how to roll them together so the matches stay together and we made a game out of tossing the rolled socks into the basket.

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Now all I have to do is carry the basket from room to room and put them away. Perhaps we'll sort by owner next time and have the sock owners put them away.

Goodnight, Goodnight, Construction Site

It's been an especially trying last few days with my son, but tonight he did something cute and smart with books that made me forget my frustrations, well for a minute anyway. He started pulling books off of his shelf while he was searching for the perfect story, a practice where he has become an expert, in an effort to stay up just a few minutes longer. Tonight he made a long train of books on the floor and just as I was about to ask him to put them back on the shelf, I noticed something about them. There was a mixture of board, paperback and hardback books, but they all had a common theme. I said, "Why did you put these here?" He replied, "Cause they're all construction books." What's really interesting about this is that I was just talking with some other educators last week about using book sorting in the classroom as an activity for talking about genres and fiction versus non-fiction. These teachers were talking about using book sorting with upper grades, but I think this could be a valuable activity for a variety of levels.

Ultimately tonight, my son chose one of his favorites, Goodnight, Goodnight Construction Site written by Sherri Duskey Rinker and illustrated by Tom Lichtenheld. This one is great for truck lovers like my son as the construction trucks finish up their work and head off to bed. It's a fantastic, easy to read rhyming book with excellent illustrations. It contains construction vocabulary that only those who know about trucks can truly appreciate. It's the perfect bedtime book for rough and tumble boys because even those big, tough trucks get sleepy.