H is for Hearts

I have 5 minutes to make this post - so here goes:
Well, Valentine's is coming up and since it is on a Tuesday, it will have already passed if we wait to do our Heart unit during Valentine's week. So it will be next Wednesday, the 8th.

This time I found most of my stuff on abcteach.com. I tend to avoid this site as it is a pay site, and I had previously though everything was for members only, but this time I found great stuff and was pleasantly surprised.
a sorting sheet, a weaving pattern, find the different one worksheet, and a cute coloring page. My ink is going out so I think I will take one of the sorting sheets that I printed (the pastel sheet was printed with the pastel blue and the pastel green looking exactly the same) and I cut out the hearts, stickerize them and let the kids use them on the coloring page.
I already have H cards from Halloween to use. (Yay for multipurposing!) And of course will use the first-school H worksheets
I have some books from the library I am really excited about:
The I love you book by todd park (it made me cry)
and
Be Mine, Be Mine, Sweet Valentine by Sarah Weeks (another recurring rhyme book with lift-the-flaps!) Very excited about these

M is for Mitten and G is for Groundhog recap

Our Mitten week last week went SO well! We followed mostly what I posted. Little Mister did not come back, so we missed him. He wasn't back this week as well, so I may have to do a follow up call.

I DID do the "snow playdough" and it was a serious hit. I wasn't sure I had the consistency right, but I read further on different blogs and found somewhere that said that it was crumbly, but would hold its shape once compacted.  Which is what this did. I also read somewhere that someone used baby oil instead of baby oil (but I wasn't using my baby oil, so this seemed to be a good use for it) I also used baby oil gel, which at first I thought compromised the consistency, but then I realized my playdough was just the way it was supposed to be)

Today we did Groundhogs

I got a tracing page, a coloring page and a groundhog craft all from first-school. Because I was doing a rather truncated version of school today, I found this fantastic website that had cute ideas, but I really didn't use anything from there. However, it gave me great confidence in my decision not to send Benjamin to state funded pre-k next year.  I have already done a bit of research and plan on writing a post dedicated to the research behind this decision.

We are getting better at reading and when I went to the library last week I found three books in the library on Groundhog's day. I was super thrilled! The two we used were:


This was very cute with a recurring phrase the kids could repeat (which I love!)


Cute, but a little over-long for 3 year olds. However, it did provide the vital information that I never remember that if the groundhog sees it shadow and hides that means  6 more weeks of winter, but if it stays out, then spring will come soon. It was a story of a raccoon that ran a skiing lodge. He didn't want spring to come soon, so he kidnapped the groundhog. I paraphrased heavily. I would have been better at paraphrasing had I read it beforehand. But this week seemed to be really tight for time.

Hopefully next week will be better - I plan on doing H is for Hearts! Yay for February holidays! It makes planning all that more easy!