Valentine’s Day Sensory Bin

I saw this idea over at No Time for Flashcards a while ago and thought it looked cute and simple.  My favorite things 🙂

First I cut some scrapbook paper into hearts.

Then I printed pictures of our family members onto card stock and cut those into hearts.

I mixed those in a plastic bin with some fake flower petals.  Hunter studied it for a bit.

Then he started looking at the pictures of the family members.

Of course, he dumped the whole bin 🙂

Then he sang the “Clean Up” song while putting all the pieces back.  He was funny because when we finished putting all the pieces back in he kept saying “Da-da” and “Hay-Yee” until I took Daddy and Hailey’s pictures back out of the bin.  He did not want those in the bin with the rest, hahaha.

Tot School

 Hunter is 13.5 months old

It was a slow week at Tot School this week.  It just seemed like I was so busy there wasn’t much time to do a whole lot of activities.  We are considering homeschooling Hailey next year for 2nd grade and I have to admit I spent a lot of time online researching curriculum as well as looking for homeschooling groups in our area.  There were also a few appointments last week and it just seemed like we had places to be every day.  We did find time to do a few Tot School activities though.  Our “theme” was the color red and Valentine’s Day.

We made a Valentine’s Day discovery bottle which Hunter had fun with.  I used pink shampoo and some purple plastic hearts.  Hunter liked watching the shampoo slowly run from one end to the other.

Hunter made a heart using contact paper and red tissue paper.  He loved feeling the sticky contact paper.  You can see the full post here.

Hunter also did some mess free painting.  I put red paint and paper in a ziploc bag and taped it to the table.  He loved it!  And there was no mess at all, which I loved!

Hunter enjoyed playing with some red playdough and using a heart to press heart shapes into it.

Hopefully we’ll get a bit more done this week!  Stop by 1+1+1=1 to see what the other tots have been up to this last week.

Fun With Playdough

This week Hunter played with playdough for the first time.  He is learning the color red, so I let him check out some red playdough.

He definitely thought it was interesting.  He loved touching it and squeezing it.

I used a cookie cutter and cut out a heart shape… Hunter tried to put the heart back.

He loved seeing the results of pressing the cookie cutter into the playdough.

Of course he had to taste it.

And play peek-a-boo with it.

He loved playing with playdough and it kept him occupied for quite a while!

(A note of caution- when I worked in a daycare center there was a little girl who stuffed playdough into her mouth and it got stuck on the roof of her mouth.  It had to scraped off and was pretty hard to get out.  So, keep a close eye on your toddlers when they are playing with playdough.)

Valentine’s Day Fun for Toddlers

Here are a couple of super easy and fun ideas to do with your toddlers.

I cut out a piece of contact paper in the shape of a heart and taped it down to the table.  Hunter thought it was very interesting that his hands were sticking to it.

Then he added some red tissue paper to it.  He eventually lost interest and since he was sitting at the table he decided he should have a snack instead and started signing “more eat.”  So while he had some fruit I finished the heart 🙂

Once it was done I put contact paper on the other side of the tissue paper and hung it up on our deck door.

Hunter loves going over and looking at it!  He has tried a few times to take it down, but I told him to leave it there and he has been listening.

We also made a Valentine’s Day Discovery bottle:

I used pink shampoo and some purple hearts.  The purple hearts are something I found in the dollar bins at Target a couple of years ago, but you could use anything.  Don’t forget to use a hot glue gun to secure the top on the bottle.

Hunter loves watching it.

He waits for it to get to the other end then flips it back over to do it again.

Both activities were easy and there was no mess… that’s my kind of fun 🙂