Overflowing with joy...(and mail)

We had thirteen beautifully decorated Valentine's Day mailboxes all lined up on the shelf tops, ready to receive valentines from friends.  

They were so full that they began to overflow. It was quite a debacle. The kids kept trying to figure out which fallen card, note, lollipop, or bag belonged to which mailbox. 

There was stuff falling all over the place, so much so that we had to move a shelf to fish out valentines from behind furniture.  I thought, "Hm, maybe next year we should have bigger mailboxes".  We thought of a temporary solution, which was to turn the mailboxes up on their sides like so:

Gravity was now on our side.

But what a fortunate problem to have.  Mailboxes literally overflowing with the best physical manifestation of love that the children and their parents could conjure up for this holiday.  A beautiful problem indeed. My husband and I call these "quality" problems.

It's like the tangible version of one of our favorite love songs, "Love is Something":

Love is something if you give it away,

give it away,

give it away,

Love is something if you give it away, 

you end up having more.

Love's just like a magic penny, 

Save it up and you won't have any,

Lend it spend it you'll have so many, 

Falling all over the floor!!!

Love is something if you give it away!

We really do it up at circle time on Valentine's Day.  After a silly round of 

"Skidamarink-a-dink-a-dink, 

skida-ma-rink-a-doooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo" 

(yes, it's that long and that silly), 

we played an estimation game of how many hearts were in small jars, 

we sang "I'm gonna mail myself to you", 

"There's a little wheel turning in my heart", 

and we ended with a voluntary game of Valentine Bingo, 

courtesy of my friend Kristin over at Preschool Daze.

It was fun to yell "Bingo" in unison!

Thank you, Kristin!

Happy Valentines Day, 

dear readers.

Love,

Stephanie

Dear Pinterest...

This post is my thank you note to Pinterest.

_________________________

This was pinned from  The Education of Ours

And here is what we introduced today:

This was pinned from Rockabye Butterfly

Here is our version, introduced today:

Here's what I pinned from Share and Remember

And here is what I made today:

___________________________________

I wonder what adventures my friend Pinterest and I will go on tomorrow...

*Stephanie*

Add some *bling* to a tried and true favorite!

Marble painting

For some extra Valentine's day pizazz, 

just add heart shaped cardstock and metallic paints!!!

Since I never have figured out a good drying rack solution, I like to alternate the direction of these extra large trays to dry two-dimensional art.

Hearts, Holes, and Heaping piles of yarn

Punching...

Lacing...

Wrapping...

Watching...

Tying...

Taping...

Focusing...

We displayed them outside in on our porch:

And while we were hanging stuff on the porch, we thought we'd hang  a little welcome rattle: 

Re-useable Valentine's Day Word Search

I used Excel to make a word search game for the children, some of whom are already sounding out words for reading and writing (play-based curriculum works!).  Many of the children were successful despite it being their first experience with a game like this. I laminated both the word search puzzle and the word list so they could erase and re-use.

Some points to remember for next time:

• overlapping words makes it trickier
• words that are phonetically spelled and pronounced makes the experience more rich as the children read on their own without help
• for younger children, I'd keep it simple with shorter words and a smaller card (maybe rows and columns)
• the "xoxoxoxo" and "xoxoxo" were space fillers so that there weren't too many extraneous letters that are confusing for the eyes of pre-readers

This post was inspired by: