Besides Halloween, Valentine’s Day is one of my favorite holidays. Why? Not because of the romance and the Valentine’s. If you can believe that or not. But because of the story that is behind Valentine’s Day. Saint Valentine.
What’s interesting is they have never done a movie based on this story. Live action anyways. Plenty of kid cartoon shorts. I think it would make a great story for Valentine’s Day. They have made Jesus’s story and Moses enough.
For those of you who don’t know the story. It’s varies.
https://www.learnreligions.com/st-valentine-patron-saint-of-love-124544
In the end, we celebrate this mans sacrifice on the day of February the 14th to have the right and faith of love, friendship, love and marriage. I think it’s beautiful story that is never really told in schools. Which is wrong. In my book anyways.
I found a book that I can read to my kids on Monday. This series of books does all the holidays and I can’t wait to get them all. I have Easter and I have Valentine’s Day now.
I mean how hard is it to teach what we celebrate.
Back to Valentines day for kids. In preschool we have a party during the week, which includes, games, prizes, and crafts, and of course the Valentines Day famous Shoe Box.
If you dont remember that from your school days, just go to target, walmart, or even the craft stores and they have tones of ready to buy kids to help decorate them. They even have the boxes with the holes already in them to use. However I am going old school and giving the kids a shoe box ( Ill cut the holes) and they can either use the decorations I bought for them or use the construction paper and stickers I have.
These are the decorations.
Because I have only one day with my kiddos this is going to be one of the craft times, and the other will be making a lot of hearts and turning them into animals.
hopefully they will like these.
We might do the Valentines day crowns.
There are lots of crafts one can do for Valentines of all ages. You just have to look them up
Today while I was lesson planning this theme for both the kids next week, I was also looking up ideas to do with Preschoolers in general, just in case I become a ELC or Preschool Teacher next school year. What would I be doing all week long with the kiddos.
So something I came up with for Learning the letter of the week was: Using the Leapfrog movie as a platform for all the letters. Turn a corner of the room with the letter of the week, with all the things that start with the Letter V and the Word wall with things that start with V. I know it may sound simple enough, but it will look cooler or sound cooler if you knew what I was picturing. If you go to Netflix and watch the Leapfrog Letter Factory movie, you will understand what I mean by the Letter Rooms. My kiddos know every sound for every letter thanks to this movie. The only thing is in Preschool classrooms they dont always allow teachers to use the TV to show something. Course this was a long time ago, who knows what it is like today. Virtual Learning and all. So I would ( if I wasnt allowed to show this clip of each letter) just turn a corner of my room to the letter of the week. It would be work, but it would be worth it.
In math we are moving on to Measuring Math for Preschoolers. Now i know this doesnt go with the theme, but I was going to start talking about what we are doing in other subjects too. Simple math, the math stuff that comes with the Printables is easy, but it isnt challenging and it isnt given to you with the themes. I mean their are printables that go with those things, but there is no direction of when to do them. So you have to choose whats best for your preschoolers.
My kiddos are so smart thanks to number blocks. Now we are moving past counting and understanding of the number. We are moving onto other categories. Starting with Measuring. Measuring begins in preschoolers with understanding of what is opposite of the other.
Such as:
- Big Vs. Small ( the measuring we are doing this week)
- Tall vs. Short ( next weeks lesson)
- More or Heavy vs less or Lite ( the week after next
- Hot vs Cold ( we arent doing until weather week which is two weeks away from more vs less
There are lots of other math skills we will be learning but first we ware doing measuring Big vs Small, so they start noticing and understanding the difference.
For English we will be reading the above book and talking about Valentines day words.
Such as;
- Friendship
- Love
- Valentine
- Card
- Flowers etc.
Finally we will be doing a lot with the shape of the heart. Which is another preschool math skill, but they know the heart really well. So it will be fun.
For pretend play we will have out the fake flowers and the plastic vases and the flower shop signs. The kids can play flower shop. It is so cute.
Wish me luck. And I will do the same for you. Have a good weekend.
The TAWL Mom 