Love is in the air! Welcome to our ❤️Valentine's Inspired Unit study! I hope you will follow along as we will be spreading love through hands-on fun and crafty activities! This time of the year is so special as children can learn to be thoughtful by making Valentines gifts; they can express creativity through many arts and crafts which can be turned into DIY Valentine's cards, and they can have fun with many Valentine's themed activities and unit studies.
We read this Valentine's book which is perfect for a three-four-year-old child. The story of Saint Valentine is very sad, and this "Rookie" series book has just enough information for little ones to understand the holiday with big colorful illustrations on each page-spread.
Below you will find activities arranged by the area of study.
🙌🏻 PRACTICAL LIFE
See here Valentine's Inspired ❤️ Hearts Pipe Cleaner Beading Craft.
For more on pipe-cleaner DIY, see here Pipe Cleaner ❤️️Heart ✏️Pencil Valentine's Gift.
See here a 📽️ video post~ 💞Valentine Inspired DIY Colander and ❤️️Heart Threading 🙌🏻 Fine Motor Activity.
See here ✂️Scissors • Primary Colors 🍝Pasta Cutting.
See here DIY ❤️Valentines Heart Stickers ✂️ Scissors🎥Cutting Activity for Kids.
SENSORIAL ACTIVITIES
❤️Valentines Foam Slime Hearts Cookie Cutters
SENSORY +🙌🏻FINE MOTOR❤️Foam Slime:
- 1/2 cup of clear glue
- 1 teaspoon of baking soda (bicarbonate of soda)
- 1 tablespoon of borax powers
- few drops of red coloring
- add glitter
- add foam balls ~ mix well ~
- [Add last] ACTIVATOR: squirts of contact lens solution until the substance begins to bond and starts to come off of the sides of the plate (then mix well with the hands ~ you will notice in few minutes how the consistency begins to change, becoming less and less sticky);
- *if too sticky, add a few more drops of contact lens solution until it feels right ~be careful not to add too much as it will become brittle.
Fine Motor Sensory heaven! For more on slime, see here 🎅🏻 Santa ❤️ Red Slime DIY Jar (Science 🔬⚗️⚖️ 101 🎥Series 🎇)
See here Frozen Juice ❄️Ice 👄Lips 😋Taste Matching 🎥 Sensorial Activity.
Check out here our Valentine's inspired Love ❤️️ Sensory Bin.
For detailed presentations, see here the introductory lesson on Knobless Cylinders.
See here ❤️Valentines ✨Glitter Sensory Bottle ~ Calming Jar.
❤️Heart Spearmint Candy ⚗️Experiment ~ the color and sugar dissolve into the water and then diffuse through it.
Read here about the ⚗️ science behind this experiment, when we did a similar experiment but with Skittles ~ "Colorful 🌈 Skittles Fun💧 Water Science Experiment for Kids •🔬⚗️⚖️ 101 🎥 Series 🎇."
LANGUAGE ❤️Valentines 🙌🏻Tactile 🔠Language Sensory Bin❣️
Making ❤️red rice 🍚 was super easy (add a little vinegar to dry uncooked rice, add coloring, mix, then lay to dry), and Adrian was doing a puzzle he lost interest in a while ago! (Don't you love ♻️up-cycling old toys!) Today, his interest was ignited since he had to use a 🙈 blindfold (ala sleeping 💤mask), seek 🔠the letters and identify 🔠them purely by their shape via the tactile sense of 🙌🏻touch! (We are using these alphabet letters.) It was super fun, and we kept playing it, taking turns over and over!
MATH
Read a post here about Valentine's Hearts 💯Hundred Board.
See here Odd and Even 📽️lesson where Adrian explains the concept of pairs.
❤️Valentines Numbers Sequencing
This ❤️Valentines Inspired🔢Number Sequencing DIY took less than 5 ⏱mim to set up!
What you need: clothespins, heart counters (we are using plastic ones from Michales Store), a Sharpie and a glue gun (to glue the hearts to the clothespins). Then I simply wrote on four strips of paper number sequencing: 10-19; 20-19; 30-39 and 40-50 to reinforce number recognition and sequencing with teens and tens. For a younger child, write numbers 1-10 (like here) and have your child find a missing number. Did I mention that this is also an awesome fine motor exercise for those little fingers!
Read here Valentine's inspired - Number Bingo for Early Math (Numbers 1-50).
ART/CRAFT
"Rawr! Means I love you in Dinosaur!"
This card was inspired by Little Tiny Learner 🎨 (see here). I hope I was not the only one who was making Valentine's Cards on Valentine's Day! (Well, just a few extra ones Adrian decided to give out the day of.) Little Tiny Learner 🎨has a detailed description on her blog (see here) on how to make this awesome card, as well as a card's template. Here are a few variations we have done:
- since I do not have a double-sided printer, I tried printing one page at a time and then re-inserting that same page, but for some reason I made mistakes (either 2 pages printing on one or the layout was off), so I printed as single page the next few cards and then just glued the backs together ~ and these cards came out thicker and more substantial which I liked;
- we used blue washable finger paint instead of the ink pads, which I did not have;
- neither did I have the Kwik Stix to draw the mouth, so using a glue gun I secured the cut red pipe-cleaner; in addition to googly eyes,
- we also sprinkled glitter when the paint was still wet and added some Dino stamps (dipped into these craft ink pads) as embellishments.
Making this card was also a great practice for Arian writing his name.
See here a video of Adrian making 💗Valentine's Inspired Threaded ♻️Paper Heart Craft.
Make💙 hearts,🌺 flowers, or a 🖼 frame for your Valentine with fusible beads! Read here Pixel Art Fusible Beads.
See here Valentine's 💝 Card ~Blue Truck 🚙 Foot Print~ Sending Loads of💗Love.
Julia and Adrian's feet Art Projects, along with 36 Classroom Valentine's Day Gifts (see below).
Read here a post about Classroom Valentine's Day Gift Ideas.
I hope you liked our ❤️Valentine's inspired unit. I would love to hear which activity was your favorite!
To see our shelf set up last year, see here Valentine's 💗 Inspired Shelfies & Activities Roundup.