Monday 8 February 2016

Valentine's Day: Kids Projects

I will be honest, I am not really into the romantic stuff for Valentine’s Day. Honestly, my favorite part is the 50% off chocolate the day after.  Logan and I tend to just continue our normal life and routine during this holiday and don’t do anything special, we don’t even get each other a card. 


As a mom and a teacher though, I enjoy the holiday and doing all the little things.   The girls love making cards for their school friends. We also like getting together with friends and having some special treats and playing some themes games.  For some super fun family/friends/classroom minute to win it games check this link out, link.   All five of the games are super easy to pull off and require very few items in order to play. 


This year for Anya’s class we decided to print off Valentine’s day candy wrappers, found here link, and use up all the full sized chocolate bars we have in our pantry.  Anya’s attention span is limited.  When I see things on Pinterest I get so excited that it’s sometimes disappointing when they don’t turn out quite as nicely.  A few times as she was cutting, I wanted to take over.  My brain was screaming, “STOP!  YOU ARE CUTTING CROCKED!  YOU ARE GOING TO CUT SOME OF THE LETERS OFF!!!!!!”  Instead, I bit my tongue, fought my urge and I reminded myself that the important thing was for her to do it, not for it to look like it belonged on Pinterest.    Sometimes as parents we want it things to look nice but that often results in us taking over rather than allowing our children to really be in charge.  I know it’s hard but it’s so CRITICAL for them to be in charge of their own work.  Below is her end product.

 

 




Halie on the other hand worked on her project for about an hour and will finish it off tomorrow after dance. She asked me to help her with the some of the cutting so that it looked “perfect”. She is much more patient, careful and really likes to focus in on the details. When she began school things didn’t always come to her easily so she has had to learn to work at things and not to give up quickly. At first, I found it difficult to watch her struggle but now I am thankful because she has learned a vital skill, not to give up when things get hard. Anya has not learned that yet and I am not sure she will anytime soon. Halie is also very artistic. She loves art, drawing, pottery, painting, sewing, singing, dancing, etc. She loved the tic-tac toe boards we made and has written carefully on each one. We used double sided tape in the end to tape the boxes to the back of the boards and that’s where she wrote her friends names and who it’s from. To get your own printable go here link. One piece of advice, get little bags and buy jelly beans, heart candy or something other than tic-tacks; they cost me $34 for 24 of them! (I know, I am cheap).

 
 A few of our favorite books are:
Fancy Clancy (Chapter Book) 

Franklin's Valentines

Pinkalicious: Pink of Hearts

 


Happy Valentine's Day!



2 comments:

  1. YOU HAVE A BLOG!!!!!!!!!!!!! I was just snooping around Jordan's page and clicked on some of her reads....well what do ya know, how fun. Adding you to my feedly.

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  2. Hi Deena. It's a new adventure for me that will hopefully help me be more aware and thankful for all the little thins in my life. I love your blog, so I appreciate your encouragement and any words of advice.

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