Love and Friendship

Promoting kindness and friendship, we read Heartprints by P.K. Halliman. Throughout the book, there are many different acts of kindness illustrated by the characters in the book and surrounding each act of kindness are lots of heartprints. We talked all week about how we could leave heartprints throughout the day.

We had a graph to show our acts of kindness. Each time we were "caught" leaving a heartprint, we placed a heart shape above our name. It was fun to see how the hearts multiplied as the week progressed.

Yo Yes

gives a perfect example of  how to make friends and is just an all around fun book to read.

"What makes a good friend?" was the topic of the week. We talked about how to be a good friend- making friends feel better when they're sad or mad, making friends feel welcome and meeting new friends. We role played meeting new friends by introducing ourselves, shaking hands, and saying, "Nice to meet you."

We played "Musical Hearts" outside while we moved to friendship songs. 

We used heart beads, valentine straws and beads of valentine colors to make valentine necklaces- great for fine motor practice.

Always a favorite...Valentine Post Office! With hearts galore and lots of stickers and stamps, we had fun working with our friends, making some beautiful valentines.

Our sensory bin was filled with hearts of all colors shapes and sizes. We sorted, poured, manipulated, and more!

Speaking of "hearts", we watched and listened to a healthy heart. Then we used a stethoscope to hear our own healthy hearts beat. 

Then we went outside to do exercises to make our hearts work hard and to keep them healthy. We had two dice to toss with numbers and exercises.

After our workout, we listened to hearts again to show how we made them work hard to keep them healthy. 

Hearts are a symbol for Valentine's Day.

We had heart shape pans, marbles and valentine colors for some marble painting. We dipped the marbles in the paint and then used a spoon to transfer them to the heart-shaped pan. We moved the pan around as the marbles did the painting for us.

We rolled out dough and used heart shaped cookie cutters and valentine sprinkles to make cookies for our party. 

Love and friendship was in abundance as we passed out our Valentine cards and treats we brought for our friends. 

 

It was a great celebration!

After reading Love From the Very Hungry Caterpillar, 

we went on a heart adventure similar to his. We had hearts to guide us along the way, with a movement on each heart- fly like a butterfly, spin like a tornado, sing "ABC's", hop on one foot, sing "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star", jump like a frog, waddle like a duck, sing "Skidamarink", run like a roadrunner, fly like a jet...

There are so many great books about love and friendship. We read them over and over again. Old favorites like...

the bear books-

Corduroy books-

and some new favorites...

Another new favorite, My Heart is like a Zoo,

inspired us to create collages with heart shapes- construction paper hearts and hearts dipped in paint...

Using padlocks and keys, we unlocked the hearts. We had to find the right matches and then manipulate the key to open the lock. 

We couldn't end the week without playdough- red and hot pink! Added to our play were acrylic hearts, heart-shaped cookie cutters and the usual- knives, forks, garlic press and scissors.

We had a great time celebrating love and friendship with our families and friends. 

Here are some random pictures of friendship captured throughout the week...