Joyfully Weary

One of the boys' favorite activities is playing with baking soda and vinegar. A couple weeks back I surprised them with some heart shaped baking soda and they enjoyed it so much we decided make some more for their valentines. 

This unit came together pretty easily. I picked up a few fun heart things (toothpicks and jewels) at Dollar Tree, that I then added to some activities we've done before. If you are still trying to get children to master a skill sometimes simply changing a few of the materials makes the activity exciting again.  Language - matching lower case letter hearts to the correct upper case letter carton the hearts are plaster-of-paris poured in to a silicone heart tray. the egg carton was  originally made for matching letter buttons and has also been used for letter easter egg matching filling in letters with heart jewels *the cards are from,  early learning activities . i printed two per page so they'd be a bit smaller. My youngest two enjoy using these cards to practice spelling their names. sorting hearts pushing heart toothpicks in to the matching color i used sharpies to color the styrofoam, toothpicks are from ...

Last Saturday we had a heart-themed birthday brunch for Little Lady. We went with hearts because being so close to Valentines Day it was easy - she's also pretty obsessed with pink and red.  In addition to the Valentine decorations I posted a couple weeks back, we decorated our porch a bit with a festive wreath and our chalkboard. We also added a little streamer to the stairs.  Since most of the guests are still pretty young we didn't plan too many party activities - they were happy to just explore someone else's toys. We did, however, have a simple stained-glass heart activity and I hung up a few of our homeschool activities .  Our menu was also pretty simple. We picked up bagels and donuts from two of our favorite places. We also had little smokies, a spanish tortilla, and lots of fruit. There was coffee for the adults (I made a bunch of homemade creamers ) and milk and juice for the kids.  picture the galvanized tin full o...

In the past we've never really decorated for Valentines Day , except for the day of when we hide hearts. This year, though, I had a couple ideas I wanted to try and we've also decided Little Lady's birthday party theme is going to be hearts.  It's still almost two weeks before the party but this way I figured we'll get a lot of bang for our buck.  All these decorations are really inexpensive - maybe $6 dollars a piece, at the most. They are also all pretty simple - the kids helped a lot. Another thing I like about these ideas is that with a couple color or shape changes, they work for pretty much any holiday. For example, if you substitute green for red/pink and shamrocks for hearts you'd be all set for Saint Patricks day.