Valentine's Day Unit

I normally write about our homeschool week after the fact, but I thought I'd write about my plans instead this week, in case anyone was still looking for Valentine's Day ideas.



Below is a picture of our sensory bin. I had it about halfway finished when I saw the bins at 1+1+1, and Counting Coconuts. I ended up borrowing some of their ideas.

Some of the contents of ours are:

flower petals

feathers

pom poms

heart shaped beads

felt hearts

red plastic letters

plastic heart bracelets

We'll be doing some scavenger hunt type activities, like "find two kinds of red hearts," " find something fluffy, and something hard." I'll also be doing some color sorting with V.

After reading through the excellent list of Valentine's activities at Counting Coconuts, I set up a lacing activity with beads and pipe cleaners. I also pulled out red and white Unifix cubes to work with this week, red wooden beads and laces, fake flowers for V to arrange and pretend with, and dot stickers as a fine motor activity for V, who by the way loves stickers.

We're going to talk about different kinds of love, the love a parent has for their children, love for a pet, love for a friend, the love God has for us.

We'll be making handmade Valentine's Day cards as a crafty activity.

To practice writing, we'll be filling out the to and from sections on ready made cards, and writing a "love" letter to a favorite person of L's choosing.

We'll be doing some math and pattern activities with conversation hearts candy. The kids never seem to get tired of "candy math."

I printed out some of the printables from Confessions of a Homeschooler to use as well.


Below you'll find some of the resources we'll be using this week.

Felt Valentine Treat Bag

I haven't posted many projects lately. Here's one I finished last night. It's a little felt bag to put baby V's Valentine's goodies in. I made it fairly large to accomodate the Yo Gabba Gabba coloring book that's going in it. The sewing was all obviously done by hand. This was just a quick, easy project from stuff I already had lying around.

V loves bags and purses. I think she'll like it.

Need a cool Valentine's Playlist?

My husband and I normally don't really make a big deal out of Valentine's Day. It's just not our deal.

In 2005, when I was pregnant with L, I must have been feeling really hormonal and mushy though, because I decided to burn my husband a mix CD of my favorite love songs. It was a hit with him, and is still one of our favorites, after all these years. Other folks riding in our cars over the years have dug it too, so I thought I'd share it, in case anyone was trying to come up with a cool, low budget gift. Some of the songs are standards, some you might not have thought of...

Into the Mystic-Van Morrision

Fade into You-Mazzy Star

Love Song-The Cure

Call on Me-Janis Joplin

Melt With You-Modern English

Yes I am-Melissa Ethridge

Keep on Loving You-Reo Speedwagon

At Last-Etta James

Stand by Me-Ben E King

Violently Happy-Bjork

Crash-Dave Matthews Band

Thank You-Tori Amos

(Incidentally, this one was originally a Led Zeppelin song, but at the time, I only had it on vinyl, and couldn't find anywhere to download it, so I used Tori's version, which is also great. Given the choice, I would have went with the original, though...)

Possession-Sarah McLachlan

All of My Love-Led Zeppelin

Time after Time-Cyndi Lauper

What are your favorite love songs?