Tot School- H is for Heart

February is in full swing, and along with that is Valentine's Day and talk of love and hearts!  We did a heart themed Tot School last week, and this week are working on Valentine's themes!  (Sorry this post is late!  The week has just gotten past me!)  Little Guy 31 months old. 

To practice the letter H, I printed a few different sheets.  One is from the Valentine's pack at This Reading Mama and two are from the Valentine's tot pack at 3 Dinosaurs.  I let Little Guy use an H stamp, a heart stamp, a dot marker, and a variety of heart stickers.  He really liked using the stickers, and it was a simple way for him to have a little bit of free play within our work time.

We found some great cutting practice from the Cut It Out Valentine's pack at This Reading Mama.  Her Valentine's cutting pack had many hearts to cut, which was great for our heart theme!  Little Guy wanted to glue what he had cut when he was finished.  On one paper, he made a house and with some triangles and gave it two roofs!  It was neat to see him imagine the shapes into something else.

The next tray was sort.  I had some foam hearts in pink and red, big and little.  Little Guy had to sort them by color and size onto the tray.  I had taped one heart of each color and size in each compartment.  I gave him the option of using the tweezers, but  he chose not to.  He did not seem to enjoy this one, but is is a great skill to be able to sort by two attributes, so we'll probably do more activities like this.

The next activity was a book from This Reading Mama called "My Heart.  Each page had a blank heart on it with words at the bottom, so we filled in the heart with what it said.  For example, the first page said "My heart is filled with circles" so Little Guy used a dot marker to put circles in the heart.  He seemed to enjoy working on it!

It had been a while since we had practiced lacing, so I made a heart out of foam for him to practice.  If I hold it for him, he can get all the way around without missing any holes.  If he holds it, the shoelace gets zig-zagged across the heart!

We had another sort this week.  I punched little red hearts and wrote an "H" on some of them and left the others blank.  Little Guy had to sort them onto the sheet.  Again sorting was not his preferred activity this week.

This next activity was probably the favorite.  To prepare, I cut out 3 white hearts and strips of red construction paper.  Little Guy had to cut the strips into squares.  Then we smeared glue all over the heart, and he decorated the heart with the squares.  We did one each day for three days.  (Some grandparents may or may not be getting these in the mail as Valentine's!)  He kept saying "They are getting pretty" as he worked on them!

Another favorite was the heart poke page from This Reading Mama.  Little Guy enjoyed using a toothpick to poke the holes into the paper.  He actually did a pretty good job of staying on the line.

The last activity this week was Roll and Count Candy Hearts from the Valentine's tot pack at 3 Dinosaurs.  We used a dot marker to mark which candies had been rolled.  Little Guy did the rolling while I was in charge of marking.  He did a good job of counting when we were done.

How are you practicing H?

We linked up to the Tot School Gathering Place at 1+1+1=1!