February is a Great Month to Share Love

This month at Harmony's House we are remembering Black History and celebrating Valentine's Day!  Every month, every day, is a great time to love others and be kind, but February gives us a special opportunity to think about ways to show it.

Loving others requires noticing hidden qualities that make people unique and special!  In this fun box, the students will be invited to shift, smooth, and organize the pebbles to find the hidden heart.

Speaking of hidden things, can you spot the tiny letters hiding in the Explore Table?  These are fun little things to find, especially when we find our friends' and family members' letters!

Sometimes people are lonely around Valentine's Day, or feel unappreciated and under-represented.  Our Toy and Puzzle Area offers the children a chance to "mend the broken hearts" by counting and matching quantity to number.  

A few days ago, Ms. Harmony was reading to a school friend at her home, and she excitedly said, "Look!  She has a hijab!"  Impressive word use, but even more cool was that she shared her positive feelings about someone who was a different religion and culture than herself.  Ms. Harmony added this puzzle of a young girl wearing hijab to help children feel more familiar and comfortable with diversity.

Let's talk about ATTRACTION... magnetic attraction, that is!  One of our tinker tables has a tray of magnetic, and non-magnetic things to explore.  Even some of the sensory bottles have magnetic surprises inside to discover.  Other bottles just have fun Valentine's tidbits.

Let's make play-doh Valentine's together with our cinnamon sticks, heart cookie cutters, L-U-V letters, red glitter, and stampers.  <3  With such a beautiful set up, this table will surely be irresistible to our little love bugs!

Celebrating Heart Day!

We did a little bit of art... cookie cutter stamping and LOTS of stickers courtesy of J. Sumner!  (Thank you!)

We mended some "broken hearts" by matching quantity with number and completing the puzzles.

We enjoyed YUMMY sugar cookies with our own decorating designs.

Toppings of choice were strawberries, M&Ms, sprinkles, and frosting.

We rolled out play-doh hearts for days!

We found letter hearts hiding in Valentine's crinkly paper and rose petals.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Fun Photos

This is just a quick post to share pictures from last week!  We had so much fun doing pipettes and paint on the art easel, balancing Valentine ice cubes, decorating sugar cookies, swirling shaving cream, playing house with baby dolls, and exchanging Valentines.  :)

Heart Scultpures

Valentine's Day is coming soon!  Today we used craft foam, glitter hearts, beads, and wire to make these unique and super sweet Heart Sculptures.  The cool thing is that most of the materials can be found at the the dollar store.  Even cooler than that is that each child creates something totally their own.

Getting started:  We poked the hearts and beads onto the wires.

 Or alternatively, poked the wire into the craft foam block, and then added beads and hearts to the wire.  The children experimented with both methods.

These are the finished product!  While they look fantastic alone, they also look great on display together as well!

What's new in the explore table this month?

Hearts!  Love!  Sorting!  Sensory experiences!

Can you find matching letters or colors hidden in the rose petals and squiggly paper?

It's all about the Heart

This week our family celebrated Valentine's Day.  I love this holiday because the heart symbol is my "letter link."  The children call me "Ms. Harmony Heart" and I love it!  I love that my personal symbol means love, and I certainly give all my heart to the kids.

"What is a letter link," you may ask.  These handy little symbols are part of the High Scope Curriculum for early childhood.  Every child and teacher has a symbol that begins with the same letter and sound as the name.  

This serves multiple functions:

- children that are not developmentally ready to recognize letters, can still "read" their name and friends' names

- letter links teach letter identification and sounds

- letter links build phonemic awareness (hearing the sounds letters and blends make in words)

Phonemically speaking, some letters can make more than one sound.  A "letter link" must match the sound to be correct.

For example, a child could be "Cathy Cookie" but not "Cathy Circle" because it's not the same sound.

A child could be "Kody Kangaroo," but not "Kody Carrot" because while it's a matching sound, it's not the same letter.

The children explore letter sounds, inventing new letter links for self and others, test out whether the sounds match, look in books to see if the letters match up, match letter links to friends' names, use letter links to "write" to one another, and so much more.  

Baby "K" got her letter link before leaving the hospital: a Koala.  She looked like a tiny baby koala snuggled up with her dad, so it became her letter link.  Here she is sending Valentine love to you and yours!  Yes, she is koala-fied to be your valentine.  ;)