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!
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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