Monday, January 30, 2012

VALENTINE'S ~ ACTIVITIES, CRAFTS, MONTESSORI


Here are some fun Valentine's activities / crafts we did last week.

My 4 and 6 year old boys did this craft:

I printed off a heart coloring page, taped it to the outside of the glass sliding door with the heart facing inside, gave the boys puffy paint and had them trace hearts on our glass door. They loved this! It comes off easy with a bit of Windex and razor blade.




We have a big tree in our backyard, my kids looked for "heart" shaped leaves that fell from the tree.



Last year I had saved candy heart shaped chocolate boxes, I used them for my daughter. You can see it HERE. This year I used them in a different way, using similar foam shape manipulative's as the shapes in the chocolate boxes, I had my 2 year old use tongs and place them in the matching shape and close the lids on the boxes.







Stay tuned for more Valentine fun!


43 comments:

  1. Oh I love it!!! Love all these great projects for Valentines day and other holidays:)Love the puffy paint idea too, didn't know you could do that!!! Cute!

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  2. How cute are these crafts!! I love it! So much fun for Vday!

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  3. How fun! Seems to be great Vday crafts!! Very creative

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  4. love it! The window project is one that can be used in so many ways - thanks for sharing!

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  5. I soooo miss my kids being small. Home school was a BLAST when we did fun stuff like this! Little hands and minds learning is the best!!!!
    marie h
    howard house

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  6. Looks like a lot of Valentine's Fun. Very creative with the leaves they do look like hearts. I know a bunch of people who really thrived from an early Montessori education.

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  7. Such cute crafts! Love it! Must do these with my daughter! Thanks for sharing! :)

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  8. Love these crafts! I've heard good things about Montessori but my kids have never attended one.

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  9. Thanks for the fun Vday craft ideas :)

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  10. This looks like such a cool project

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  11. I love crafts! These are so cute.

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  12. I love the hearts on the glass idea. I am going to try that with my boys!!

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  13. These are really great fun ideas!


    Arandamarie1992@yahoo.com

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  14. Love the idea of looking for heart shaped leaves, cool craft!

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  15. Lovely Valentine's day activities and also the pictures are very nice.

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  16. we used to look for and keep heart shaped rocks Kimberly.Davis-J (I don't like to put my whole name or email on here)

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  17. These look like great fun activities. We will have to try some of them. My son is only 3 but we are going to homeschool him. I love your blog for all of the homeschool stuff. :)

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  18. Great ideas, Nicole! I love the puffy paint activity and use for recycled heart-shaped chocolate boxes. I featured your post at the Living Montessori Now Facebook page and added it to my Montessori-inspired Valentine's Day activities at http://livingmontessorinow.com/2012/01/30/montessori-monday-montessori-inspired-valentines-day-activities/

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  19. what a great activity!
    -Jada roo can do

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  20. I like that idea of saving the heart chocolate boxes for crafts. My daughter and I used to have a craft night every week before my boys came. Now that they are a little older I want to start doing more crafts again.

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  21. Looks like you had lots of fun! Great ideas. I really like the hearts on the windows. I will have to add that to my list of things I must try!

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  22. I love your idea of taping coloring pages to the OUTSIDE of the glass! My kids love to use their Crayola Window Markers, but they need prompting for their drawings. I will definitely be using this idea!!

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  23. What a wonderful reason to buy small boxes of chocolate. I love your activities!

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  24. Like the window painting. Wondering if window paint is any easier to wash off than puffy paint? Might try this with some window paint. My Little Man is three and plenty old to understand that window painting does not = ok to paint/ write on walls lol

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  25. I luv it! I always complain that everything fun for children is expensive unless it involves (which is great most of the time I love to occupy them.) Once in awhile though I like to have things they can enjoy doing while I just sip on my coffee. Both of these ideas are great. I prefer the valentines box idea better since we live in NY.
    Gladys P

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  26. Great ideas! Thanks for sharing! Valentine's Day is a great craft holiday!

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  27. i'm gonna try to find leaves that look like hearts. I do the same but with strawberries. I cut them in half and my son thinks they look like hearts.

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  28. aww they looks like they are having so much fun !

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  29. Oh wow, what great craft ideas! Thanks for sharing :)

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  30. Great ideas! The boys look like they had so much fun with the puffy paint. I may have to steal that idea! lol

    Shannon F.
    meltoole(at)hotmail(dot)com

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  31. It's always so fun to do valentines crafts. Thanks for sharing these ideas.

    2dogs5catscrew@att.net

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  32. Great Valentine ideas. Love those heart shaped leaves too.

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  33. this is such a great idea...i'm going to try this with my 3 year old grandson this week when he is over
    pkeintz@gmail.com

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  34. Wow you are so creative. My kids are grown now . So until I have grandchildren these cute craft project are put in a file for future use. Great work "Mom"!

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  35. What cute ideas! I have plenty of nieces and nephews that need these kind of activities to stay sane for a small amount of time! Haha, how cute though. I may have to suggest this to my sisters!

    -Ashley Morrissey
    ashleymorrissey90(at)yahoo(dot)com

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  36. I have sliding glass doors of the dining room and using the puffy paint to decorate the windows for Valentines is a great idea. Thanks for sharing it with us.
    Rhonda Martin

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  37. You are so creative! Thanks for linking up to WOTT! The hunt for heart-shaped leaves sounds like some great gross motor fun, and the other 2 activities are fun ways to use fine motor skills. I have never thought of putting coloring pages outside either! You had the most clicked post again :) Congrats!

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Nicole, the mama behind the Mama to 5 Blessings blog, is a mom to 5 children. Three boys: ages 8 years, 5 years, 2 years, a daughter 4 years and a new baby girl born April 19th 2013. She has been married to her husband Fritz for 11 years. Here at Mama to 5 Blessings you will find quite a variety of topics: recipes, crafts for moms and children, homeschooling, parenting, reviews and giveaways, thrifty tips and much more! Mama to 5 Blessings can also be found on Twitter @mamato3blessing, Facebook and Pinterest.