Last Minute Valentine Activities

More snow?! I like snow, but it is getting out of hand. Brrr! Here are a few last minute activities to help ease cabin fever.

Red Heart, Red Heart, What Do You See?

  

I found this activity on Miss Tracey's Youtube channel called LittleStoryBug. She is my secret weapon for finding fun songs and activities for storytime. Her channel is a gold mind and always my first stop when looking for a song.

Check her out! 

LittleStorybug Youtube Channel 

LittleStorybug Website

LittleStorybug On iTunes

I created my board using a small chalkboard that I found. The hearts are made out of construction paper and felt. When doing this activity I just attached the hearts to the board with tape. 

Valentines on a Stick

There is just something wonderful about things on sticks. Lollipops, corndogs,and popsicles are some of my favorites! Seriously the kids loved the sticks. Who knew?!

The hearts are made simply from cardstock. I attached the large craft stick to the heart using a mailing labels. Of course you could always use tape. Using the labels helped speed up the process as I created over 80 of these each day this week. 

  

The kids decorated their valentine's on a stick using tissue paper,party streamers,yarn,pom poms,felt,and other pretty little things. You wouldn't believe how much time the kids spent looking through all the little bits and pieces to find just the perfect ones.  

Sweet Tart Candy Heart Counting and Sorting

 Each child was given ten SweetTarts Hearts. I chose this particular brand because they are not processed in a facility that processes peanuts and tree nuts. All of my schools are nut free.The SweetTart Hearts taste really good. You could use regular candy hearts if you have those around,but I highly recommend the SweetTarts brand.

The kids sorted the hearts on the sheet by color. Next they colored in the heart underneath. The final step was enjoying some of the candy.

Click on the link below to find the sheet that I created. 

SweetTart Candy Heart Counting Sheet

Hope that you and your family found these activities fun! Remember, spring will come soon!  

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Right Now

This winter has been pretty brutal for us here in Cincytucky! We actually have a considerable amount of snow on the ground. Temperatures have been unbelievably below average. It has been below freezing for most of January and February. Having grown up in Vermont I should be accustomed to below zero temps, but I'm not. I blame it on my summer living in California. 

  

Pretty much in hibernation mode right now. I haven't had any motivation to do much of anything.  The "winter blues" are hitting me hard this year. The fog has slowly been lifting the past few days,it is slow going. Getting restful sleep has been EXTREMELY helpful. 

We joined the church that we have been attending for the past year. After six years of looking for a church home it is good to finally have a place to call home. I have begun volunteering in the children's ministry. This was my first week of actually teaching the lesson. I was a little rusty. I am more in practice of working with the under 5 set. It will take some time to get back into practice being with older kids. It will come. 


A wonderful teacher from one of my schools surprised me with a church cookbook. I had mentioned that I collect church and community cook books. It was such a sweet surprise. One of the recipes in the book is for a Swedish Nut Cake. It was super sweet and super delicious. Not exactly Weight Watcher friendly, but a nice treat. 

At work I have been trying to come up with crafts to go through my large collection of paper plates. One week the kids made winter hats out of paper plates. Another week we made paper plate cupcakes to celebrate the birthday of my storytime puppet. 

I am getting ready to put together a post about the books I am currently reading and books I plan to read in 2014. That post should be up tomorrow! 

What are some of your helpful hints to beat the winter blahs?

Pilgrim Napkin Wrap

In my scrapbooking club this week we made these adorable Pilgrim Napkin Wraps!

I found them on Family Fun!

 Here are the directions!

Fake Pumpkin Pie and Skype!

This week in Storytime we have been making  adorable "pumpkin" pies. So simple. I cut dinner sized paper plates into four pieces. The kids painted away. The best part was having the kids add a spoonful of cinnamon!  Really funny watching them stick their noses unusually close to all the orange paint. I think a few kids ended up with an orange tipped nose.

Yesterday was my husband's birthday! On Saturday he picked up a webcam for his gift. We had a good time playing with all the cool effects like the fish eye lens. So the best part of having a webcam is Skype. I wish I would have known about Skype earlier.  My family lives in northern Vermont and I live in Northern Kentucky.Thanks to Skype I was able to video chat with them. I ate ice cream with my 4 year old niece. I even read her a story! It was fantastic! I am very homesick and the ability to see everybody had me in tears. We have set up plans to video chat again on Thanksgiving when everybody comes over for dinner! Thank you Skype! Thank you technology!

Paper Bag Album

My elementary school scrapbooking club starts this week! For our 1st session (4 weeks) we are going to be making a paper bag album! It is pretty simple to put together and looks oh so cool! I put this example together this afternoon. When the kids make these, I'm pretty sure I'm going to cut the patterned paper to size!

Lollipop Flowers

I saw this adorable lollipop flower in Family Fun magazine! I'm always on the lookout for adorable and easy projects to do with a group of children!  They came out great! Each child made two. They took one home and then left the other one for the art show that is coming up in April. :D The project was so easy that even the Kindergartners were able to do it by themselves(a little help with the tape at the end was needed).