The month of February is always a month of celebration and learning in the Toddler room. From Valentines Day to Lunar New Year and Black History Month, there is so much to focus on. For our Valentines Day activities this year we decided to engage in ones that the children could be creative with, as well as ones that they could share with their friends. We also wanted to continue building on the children’s interests of colours and numbers, which they have been expressing throughout the month.
For our first Valentines Day activity we cut out hearts from a piece of paper and added tape to the back of the heart shaped hole. Each child was given one of these, along with small paper squares that had been left over from a previous Lunar New Year activity. There was a little bit of trial and error as the toddlers tried to stick the squares onto the tape. It was great seeing all the smiles on the children’s faces as they problem solved getting unstuck from the tape each time their hand got stuck, and the look of satisfaction as they managed to stick on each tiny square. As the children were sticking the squares down some of them were also working on their counting. Noah could be heard counting each and every square as he placed it into the heart shape. Other children were quick to work on their colour recognition as they were able to point out that the squares were red and the heart was pink. When the children were done, they were proud to show off their creations to one another. It started with Milley holding hers up when she was done, and soon spread to all of the other children holding up theirs to show too.
The second activity that we did was a Valentines Day banner. We started off with plain brown paper and gave the children markers to colour on it with. The children were able to work on their colour identification by asking their educator what colour marker they wanted, and when they didn’t have the word for what they wanted, they were able to learn from others. For our next step of banner making we taped on four of the heart outlines that were left over from the previous activity. The children’s choice of purple and red paint was poured into the hearts. The children were each then given a large paint roller to move the paint across the banner. The children loved painting standing side by side, as they got to see what their friends were painting and mix their paint with their friend standing beside them. When the children were done, they had managed to colour in all four of the hearts with a mix of paints, and when the paint was dry we peeled off the heart paper to reveal the shapes of the painted hearts.
These activities promote love, friendship, and collaboration which is the main focus of Valentines Day here in our Toddler Room. We hope the children enjoyed engaging in these collaborative activities together.
