Valentine's Activities

Here is a quick peek at our Valentine's Themed activities for the month of February. More posts to come of pictures of play!

Valentine's Sensory Bin 

 - Pom Poms

- Heart Shaped Gems

- Heart containers 

- Heart scoopers

Invitation to write, fold, and mail.

Matching and Fine Motor Skills - will later be used in sensory bin. 

Infant sensory bottle 

- Pom poms

- Glitter

- Pipe cleaners 

Invitation to bead

Making Valentine's Oatmeal for sensory play. 

Invitation to write and stamp. 

Cupcake Toppers and Styrofoam - fine motor practice. 

Winter Themed Activities

Here are our other winter themed activities we did this last few weeks :)

Salt and Glitter - Bam! This used way more glitter than I had imagined but turned out great and Little loves it. She's more into placing things into the sand (snow flakes, gems, etc.) but next year we will incorporate letters and writing. I glued the snow flakes onto the q-tips and paint brush using white glue. The glue worked well on the paint brush, but I'll need to hot glue the snow flakes to the q-tips next year.

Sticky Wall - Invitation to build -
Materials:

• Contact paper
• Cotton Balls
• Q-tips

I suggested we could build a snow man, but sorting and lining up the items was way more interesting for the Little.

 Here's our Sparkly Snow Paint - I added white paint, but if you leave it out it will be more "fluffy" when done. We'll try it again later this week without the paint and see the effect. The added peppermint to the mixture added an extra sense to discuss while painting.

Shots of play in action!

Little Ry's sensory snow bottle - salt, glitter (took it from the writing invitation), snow flakes, sparkles, pom poms, and cotton balls. Little suggested we add penguins, so we'll be doing that :) 

Arctic Ice Play

I used square ice cube trays, a block of ice we had in the freezer, and the animals from our sensory bin earlier in the month. Little decided that she needed mittens because her hands were getting chilly :) 

Snow Dough

Our play dough for the month is being called "Snow Dough." I use the same recipe every month to make our play dough. This month I didn't add any color in order to keep it white. There are variations online to add glitter but I am just not ready for glitter on EVERYTHING...just yet at least ;) I did add peppermint though, to add to the sensory experience.

Our Snow Dough Invitation

Here is the recipe that I use to make play dough:

Ingredients:

• 1 cup flour
• 1 cup water
• 2 tsp cream of tartar
• 1/3 cup salt
• 1 tsp vegetable oil
• a bit of peppermint extract 

Directions:

1. Put all ingredient in pan, on medium heat.
2. Stir as mixture heats up, mixture will become clumpy and eventually dough like.
3. Once you have a play dough consistency take out and roll on cutting board - add flour if it is to sticky. 
4. Let cool then PLAY!!! - store in plastic baggie or Tupperware 

Little tried to place all of her animals on the ball of dough. We had a discussion about flattening it out to fit more, she tried and amazingly it worked ;)

 Little Ry also got to explore! He tried to eat it, but then decided it wasn't so tasty.

Little has asked to use this everyday since I made it. She's added gems and rocks to it, as well as just asked to use it with regular play dough toys. One of her favorite things is making bears with the play dough molds and lining them up to take a nap hehe.

Snow Sensory Bin

I was so excited to make Little a new sensory bin! The holidays were so busy, as they usually are, and I have been slacking in creating fun invitations for her. So, tada, Snow and Animals!

What You Need:

Salt - I used rock salt

Gems

Mini Figures - our are from the Toobs

Cotton Balls

A Container

IMAGINATION!

I had to dig into my curriculum bins for the blue gems, and was stoked when I found them. I thought, "Oh, an ocean, how fun." Little immediately removed them lol! It's funny what we think and what they think!!!

Here's the ocean - OUTSIDE of the sensory bin lol!

The Little exploring the invitation. 

Here's some play in action. She thought that the animals needed to go to sleep, they were each meticulously placed face down, you know, so they could nap! It's so fun to watch her work, it's like I can see the gears turning as she process what she wants to do. Love it!

Final work for the day - the "rocks" (ocean) were put back in, night night animals!

The next day - I came home to find that her animals had woken up and they
were all playing the cat piano!