H is for Heart!

With Valentine's Day just around the corner, we decided to do some heart activities while learning about the letter H! Click on the links below to see some similar themes from previous years, or keep scrolling to see what we did this week!

A Toddler Valentine's Day - 2019

H is for House - 2015

Valentine's Day - 2015

Valentine's Day - 2014

Valentine's Day - 2013

The Letter H - 2012

Valentine's Day - 2012

Learning Shapes: Hearts - 2012

Letter Recognition + Dot Markers

I printed out this template from Shannon's Tot School, and gave Sweet E her pink dot marker. It felt like it had been a while since we gave these a try, and I was surprised to see how perfectly she stamped in the circles!

It was a great way to introduce our letter of the week, and she already can recognize and name the letter H!

Letter Recognition + Color Sorting + Size Comparison

Sweet E is a big fan of tape these days. So first I drew four H's of various sizes, right onto her Step2 table, with crayon. We've never had a problem cleaning up this table in the ten years we've had it!

Then I ripped off pieces of tape to cover each H. She had to choose the right color and size tape for each H, and place it on top to build her own H's.

She loved this!!

She was very careful, and pressed the tape down right on the lines.

When she had finished, we compared the sizes of the H's. For example I asked, "Which H is the biggest?" and she replied, "The red one."

It was a super successful activity, and we love these tapes. They came from a tape activity book from Melissa and Doug!

Playdough + Hearts

Sweet E loves to bring out the playdough all by herself, so I urged her to continue our theme by providing heart cutters and small manipulatives.

She cut out lots of hearts and we made heart balloons!

Then she made herself a cupcake...

complete with chocolate frosting and heart sprinkles!

She loooves this playdough tool, and uses it every time.

In addition to making the balloon strings with it, she also grabbed her plastic knife and practiced her cutting skills on them!

Sensory Bin + Counting Hearts

I used a dry erase marker to number the ice cube slots from 1-14. Sweet E can count easily to 10, but not quite all the way to 15 so this was a perfect amount for her to practice today. I hid 14 hearts in the bucket of beans, and she had to search for them!

She placed each heart into a slot.

She got very excited every time she found one!

After she found them all (those last couple were tricky!) she pointed to each and counted them up. It was great practice!

Heart Patterns

Next we kept the hearts out and made up some patterns together. First AB AB.

And then for a challenge, AAB AAB.

Hammering Hearts

One of Sweet E's current favorite toys right now is her hammer. So I created a hammering activity by placing some hearts onto a piece of Styrofoam. I always keep these from furniture packaging just for activities like this! I pushed the golf tees all the way into the foam to begin, so that hammering would be easier for her lightweight hammer, and then pulled them back up.

Once she hammered all of them, we pulled them back up so she could do it again!

She did this several times in a row.

We actually kept this out for over a week. She and Little M&M returned to it over and over again!

Bleeding Tissue Paper Heart Craft

I cut up some bleeding tissue paper into little squares, and provided Sweet E with a piece of cardstock and a squirt bottle full of water. To contain the mess, I placed it all in this inflatable tray that came with our kinetic sand kit!

Once she figured out how to squirt the water, she worked very hard on saturating the entire page!

It took several minutes, and she just kept on going! Once we started to see the colors bleed, I had her stop spraying.

Then I carefully peeled off all of the tissue paper squares. So pretty!

I cut a heart out of another piece of cardstock. Then, once her artwork had dried, I glued the heart page right on top. Super cute!!

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H is for House!

Books

We borrowed a few books from the library this week about houses, combined with the classic in our collection, The Three Little Pigs. Our favorite here was If I Built a House by Chris Van Dusen. We had borrowed If I Built a Car during our C is for Car unit, and loved it. This one was just as creative and thought-provoking for preschoolers. 

Letter H - Magnetic Pom Poms

We printed off our usual page from Shannon's, and this week Little M&M chose to use magnetic pom poms instead of dot markers.

Following a "Blueprint" - Lego Duplo Bricks

In a few of our house books this week, we learned about architects and how they create blueprints. I created this one for them to follow.

Here is Honey Pot building her H.

Then Little M&M gave it a try.

Building H's with Various Materials

We learned that houses can be made out of different things, called materials, and about the big trucks that are used on the construction site. I pulled out a few of the kids' toys, and supplied them with a few materials I had on hand. Then I asked them to build H houses out of these.

Here is Honey Pot building her H house out of sticks:

She pulled out some of the makeup sticks from her Aristocats party, so pardon the red "whisker" smears on her face!

After building an H she wanted to really build a house. It's hard to see here, but she actually built the whole foundation before adding the floor.

Always a fan of pretend play, her truck helped her the whole way through construction.

Little M&M had his turn building an H out of sticks too. First he build his favorite letter though, an I. Though he hasn't learned this one officially, he's been spotting them and creating them for months!

Here is Honey Pot building her H out of paper squares.

And then out of straws:

A few straws would do, but she wanted to use up every straw in the pile!

And here is Little M&M's much smaller H.

Once he finished this project, he decided to grab his scissors and cut up every single straw.

Wow.

Hammer and Nails - Carpenter Skills

We learned about carpenters and a few of the different skills they use while building a house. I grabbed the pretend nails, and had the kids hammer them into playdoh.

Grab your hardhat!

They loved this, and each did it multiple times.

Drawing with a Ruler - Architect Skills

We also learned about architects this week. So we practiced one of those skills, by grabbing our rulers and drawing straight lines. I provided dots as a guide so that their lines would resemble a house when they finished.

Honey Pot even drew windows, a door and a person!

Here is Little M&M giving it a try!

Shape Hunt

This idea and printable comes from No Time for Flashcards. It was a fun shape review, and had them searching the whole house. Right away Little M&M knew where to find a triangle, his pizza toy! And while we were there Honey Pot noticed the circular pan. So they colored in those shapes.

A square!

And this was a tricky one, but we did find a pentagon in our farm blocks.

Ta-da!

Paper Bag House Craft

We completed this fun craft by first painting our bags white. I love how they have two completely different methods. Little M&M was quick and painted from top to bottom. Honey Pot took her time, first painting the whole border...

And then filling in the middle with neat lines.

Once the paint had mostly dried, we drew doorknobs on our doors and bars on our windows.

Then we glued them onto our house.

Once everything was glued on, we crumpled up some newspaper...

to stuff the bag with, and we topped it with a roof! Honey Pot's became a haunted house, because as you can see, she drew a zombie, a ghost, a spider and a...

bat under the roof!

Types of Houses - "I Have/Who Has" Game

I had been seeing these all over Pinterest, featuring pictures and words to help kids learn their shapes, letter, sight words, etc. What a neat idea! So I created my own to help the kids learn about different kinds of houses over the years. I was inspired by the Gail Gibbons book we borrowed from the library. On the final page she lists a few houses from our past. We learned about log cabins, igloos, tipis, earth huts, caves, castles and even skyscrapers.

They had fun playing, and it was an awesome way to learn about these structures!

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