Valentine Math for Preschoolers

Preschoolers need lots of experience with sorting, counting, and patterning to develop their pre-math skills.  I love to make games for the preschoolers at my center to play.  Yes play, preschoolers learn through play, not ditto sheets.  So every skill you want them to learn needs to be in the form of a hands on, fun, sensory stimulating activity.  I am going to show you some of the activities I will be using with the preschoolers at my school during Valentines.  First you will need to cut about a bajillion hearts in various sizes and colors.  If you are lucky like me, you will find an organization that has an Ellison die cut machine (thanks M-Y Partnership for Children) and use the hound out of it.

The first game is a matching game.  Using black construction paper cut into 4ths, glue at least one pair of matching hearts per color to the paper.  If you make more than one pair of the same color it gives your children a greater opportunity for successfully finding a match.  But whatever you do don't use an odd number of colored cards or you will cause much frustration because they will never be able to  a match. Lol.

Here is a picture of all the hearts I cut and then laminated for extra durability.

With this pile of hearts, you can sort by size.  I have a small size, a medium, and a large.

Next I used a dry erase marker and wrote numbers on the large hearts and then you have the children count out the number of hearts indicated on the big heart.  The dry erase marker wipes off easily with a dry cloth on laminated items.  This way you can reuse the hearts of another activity.  You also see an example of sorting by color in this picture.

This picture shows patterning.  I used a sentence strip and added the hearts in a repeating pattern.  I used the simplest pattern in the example above.

This pattern is a little more difficult and would be used with your older preschoolers.

This would be the most challenging of the three patterning activities because they would have to chose the right color and the right size heart. 

I hope you found something you can use with the preschoolers in your life.  Thanks for reading.  Would love to hear from you and your activities.

Ephesians 1:16

Valentine Mantle

I have never been one who did a lot of decorating for the holidays.  I guess I found it a little intimidating.  Thanks to Pinterest, I am no longer intimidated.  I have been inspired.  Pinterest has shown me that I can take the things I already own and put them together with some things I create (cheaply) and make something I can be proud of.  The mantle in the picture above was created by using 4 items I keep on it all the time, the red topiary, the mirror, the candle stick, and the FAMILY cutout andadding red candles that I already had for Christmas, a silk rose I had in the cabinet, a simple construction paper heart garland, and a Valentine printable I found here and placed in a frame I already had.  So I spent $0.  I am already planning what I want to do for Easter.  I have been scouring Pinterest for ideas. 

Thanks for stopping by.  I hope you will come back later in the week to check out the preschool activities I will be hosting for Valentine's Day themes.  I am sure you will find something you can do with your preschooler. 

Until Next Time

Ephisians 1:16

Happy New Year!  Good bye to 2011.  Hello 2012.  What a great year 2011 was.  Our family was richly blessed in 2011.  We praise God and give Him the glory for all He has done.  We look forwar to 2012 and what He has in store for us.  I have a few goals for 2012, and maybe by making the public I will strive harder to reach them. 

1.  Pray more.
2.  Study God's word more
3.  Eat healthier
4.  Exercise at least 3 times a week.
5.  Keep my house tidier
6.  Post on my blog at least 3 times a week.
7.  Attend at least one linky party a week and make comments on two other guest.
8.  Plant a small vegetable garden.
9.  Can more this fall.
10. Spend more quality time with my family.

I hope you have set some goals for yourself for the upcoming year.  Keep checking back and I will keep you posted on how I am doing reaching my goals. 

Happy New Year!
Renee

Christmas

Well, now that everything has been taken down, the cookies have been made and eaten, Christmas play preformed, and Santa is resting at the North Pole, I will share with you some of our families holiday.

Pictures used for the Christmas cards.

Baby Girl in the church Christmas play "Hotel Bethleham"

Baby Girl trims the tree.

Chirstmas morning checking out the stockings.  Guess who the first youngan up was?  The 16 year old.  Still excited about the traditions of Christmas and spending time with his family.  It warms my heart.



Baby Girl tries to put Santa into a diabetic coma.  This was the plate of goodies she left for him, sugar cookies, peanutbutter balls, and red velvet cake balls.  I hope he put some of them in his pocket to take back to the elves.

Waiting for the traditonal Christmas breakfast at Mamaw and Papaw's of tenderloin, biscuits, and gravy.

Merry Christmas!!!

I love stuffing stockings for my family. It is one of my favorite parts of the holiday season.  My husband and I have given each other stockings since the very first Christmas we were married.  This will make Christmas number eighteen since we were married.  After that many years, I feel like I put the same things in his stocking every year, so I need some fresh ideas.  I also am having trouble thinking of original stocking stuffers for the youngans.  It was easy when they were little, you just bought small toys.  Now that they are teenagers, the small toys cost a small fortune.  I saw this blog on Pinterest.  It has some great ideas for stocking stuffers.  I am sure that my family will find more than one of these ideas in their sock this year.  Thanks Jenna!You can find Jenna's ideas here.

Thanksgiving Reflections

 The turkey!  I actually made two turkeys this year.  I had fifteen people at my house for Thanksgiving, and it takes a lot of turkey to feed that many people.  I tried something new this year, I cooked the turkey the day before Thanksgiving.  I was concerned that it would be dry when I reheated to the 165 degrees that is required to keep from making everyone sick.  So...I asked the foods teacher at school what she suggested.  She said she always had to do this with her classes when they prepared their Thanksgiving meal at school.  She suggested I take the meat off the bone and place it in a casserole dish.  After it is in the dish, cover it with some of the drippings and some chicken stock.  So that is exactly what I did.  It was wonderful.  The moistest turkey we ever had.  I cooked the turkeys in Reynolds baking bags and stuffed them with lemons, onions, and bay leaves.  They were delicious!!

 This is the dish I am most proud of, my Gingersnap Pumpkin Cheesecake.  Isn't it beautiful?  I thought it looked pretty enough to have come from a fancy bakery.  You can find the recipe here if you would like to make one for your holiday.

This was one of my brother's favorites, the sweet potato casserole.  I used a recipe that I found on Ree Drummond's Pioneer Woman blog.  I have it pinned on my recipes to try board on Pinterest if you would like the recipe.  I changed one thing.  I didn't have time to bake the sweet potatoes so I used canned ones.  Plus I had a coupon for $1 off of Bruce's Canned Sweet Potatoes.  I used two cans.  I also used evaporated milk instead of regular milk.

This is my favorite part of Thanksgiving, the dressing.  I love it simple, no fruit, no meat, and no nuts.  I simple use one package of Pepperidge Farms Herbed dressing, two cakes of cornbread I make in advance using Jiffy Cornbread Mix (the best!!), celery and onions sauteed in butter, chicken stock, poultry seasoning, and celery seeds.  Here in the South we like our cornbread dressing, and in the mountains where we go for simpler things we don't mess it up with all the things you can add to it.  It is the best!!

We enjoyed the day with our family and give thanks to the Lord Jesus for his blessings this year.

Praise b 2 Him!