tot school - valentine's part 1

Noah is 16 months old.

I have to admit, I had not been looking forward to Valentine's Day activities very much for some reason. I guess because Noah is a boy, I figured he wouldn't be into all the pink and hearts and such. But I am so glad I decided to do this theme for two weeks because Noah has been having such fun with it all!

Noah has especially enjoyed is Valentine's books so far. While he does always enjoy the books I pull to go along with our themes, he usually goes back to his favorites in the book basket by the end of the week. This week, though, he has been completely content to stay with the Valentine's ones! And Noah doesn't normally wear bibs, but he found his special birthday bib on that day and insisted on wearing it ALL DAY LONG:)

Here is what he has been reading:

Bright Baby Hugs and Kisses by Roger Priddy

Elmo Loves You (no amazon link...got it at Walmart)

Where Is Love, Biscuit? by Alyssa Satin Capucilli

Happy Valentine's Day, Mouse! by Laura Numeroff

Guess How Much I Love You by Sam McBratney

Last week, Noah discovered an intense love for spooning/transferring. When I saw these heart ice cube trays and heart measuring spoons in the Target dollar section, I knew they would be perfect for tot school! This has been one of Noah's favorite activities this week...he has even asked to do it several times:)

I tried to reinforce color with this one too. He has got red, blue, and green down pat, but I just grabbed a handful out of our big container, so no real thought went into the particular colors used.

Noah also enjoyed playing with these jumbo pompoms this week too. I intended this to be a sweeping exercise (another Target dollar find), but as you can see, he preferred to scoop them up in a spoon:)

I printed this "Achy Breaky Heart" matching game from File Folder Fun. Noah wasn't too interested though...

He only did the green one, then toddled off. Oh well...I'm going to try it again this week.

Noah had fun with red and pink playdough this week. Notice the heart spoon? Yeah...those have hardly left his hands this week!

He also enjoyed playing with the playdough containers. I used this as another color matching activity too..

I made Noah a rice sensory bin this week too. I put the jumbo pompoms in it, another heart cookie cutter, and the smaller measuring spoons. This has been his other favorite activity of the week....he has spent a lot of time transferring the rice into different containers, hiding/finding the pompoms, and so forth.

Onto our art projects for the week...

Noah kind of came up with this first one! I had paint set out to do something else, and he brought the pink paint and a pipe cleaner to me, asking me to let him paint with it. I happily obliged:)

He had lots of fun with this one..here is the finished picture.

I printed this magnet page from Making Learning Fun and intended on letting Noah use his Tadoodles markers to stamp the circles. He had been itching to use some of the glitter foam hearts I bought though, so I let him decorate the page with those instead.

I did try to help him match up some of the heart pictures to the stickers. He did okay with that, but really preferred to put them where he wanted:)

The last project we did I am so excited about...I think it turned out so cute! I saw something similar to this last week, but I cannot remember where, so I apologize for that. They used a cut out footprint, though. Anyway, we worked on this for a couple of days, and Noah enjoyed every minute of making his very own little love bug!

He is getting much better about letting me make footprints. He also put all of the heart "spots" on and glued the eyes down by himself (I just moved the eyes a little closer together). He also enjoyed playing with its antenna. I definitely think we'll be making another one to give to his Granny as her valentine:)

So that's it for our week! See what others are up to, and share you own ideas for Tot School at 1+1+1=1!