Happy Valentine's💝 Day. I hope you had a lovely celebration. Today, I will show you a sneak peek into our Learning Space (our classroom), as well as a summary of our Valentine's inspired activities.
When we moved into our new house (in September of 2016), and I walked into this room and saw these tall double windows and a cathedral ceiling, I knew it will be our learning space. Montessori classrooms are known for their light, airy and child-tailored environment, and I hoped to resemble it in our home-setting. (Adrian is sitting at a Safari table, on this chair. View Table/Chair Height Guide in this post.)
We read this Valentine's book, which is perfect for a three-year old. The story of Saint Valentine is very sad, and this "Rookie" series book has just enough information with big colorful illustrations on each page-spread.
On this shelf we have:
- Pipe-cleaner beading activity (read a post here, also see below),
- Odd and Even activity (read a post here );
- Polar bear unit study (see here International Polar Bear 🐻 Day, February 27);
- Penguin tray (read here ❄️Polar 🌎Regions Unit Study • 🎅🏻 🇦🇶Land 🌊Water 🌬Air).
Below is a summary of our Valentine's inspired activities with links to their respective posts. I also organized the activities by areas of Montessori curriculum.
PRACTICAL LIFE
Threading (red and white) beads on pipe cleaners, making hearts. (Read a post here.)
MATH
Read a post here about Valentine's inspired – Hearts 💯 Hundred Board.
Read here a post on Odd and Even, and also see two videos where Adrian explains the concept he learned.
Read here Valentine's inspired – Number Bingo for Early Math (Numbers 1-50)
SENSORIAL
Read a post about our Valentine's inspired Love ❤️️ Sensory Bin here.
ART/CRAFT
See a video of Adrian making a Threaded Heart Craft here.
Read here Valentine's 💝 inspired – Blue Truck 🚙 Foot -Print Art Project (Sending Loads of Love 💗❤️️💕)
Julia and Adrian's feet Art Projects, along with 36 Classroom Valentine's Day Gifts (see below).
Read here a post about Classroom Valentine's Day Gift Ideas.
I hope you liked our Valentine's inspired unit. I would love to hear which activity was your favorite!
p.s. Below are more posts about our Learning space:
5 Comments
Such wonderful way to celebrate, your posts just fill my heart with warmth. They are full of love for learning and your hard work and passion shows! I’m truly in awe!
It’s hard to pick a favorite, all activities are fantastic! The heart pattern in the hundred board is such a lovely idea! I loved the valentine exchanges your little ones made, so personalized ❤️
I would love to request a post on how you plan for such events, sometime in future! Particularly how far ahead do you plan and how does one know things about polar bear day or other special days in a calendar. I really appreciate all the links for resources you use, they are so helpful!
And really love the learning space, the tall windows just set a serene environment for learning. Thank you again for sharing your learning journey!
Much Love
Pavana
Dear Pavana, thank you So much for your lovely and sweet comment. You made my heart sing 🙂 Regarding planning unit studies, check this website if you are in USA http://www.holidayinsights.com/everyday.htm. You can pick and choose which holiday to create a themed study unit for, since apparently you cannot follow all the holidays:) Some unit study lessons you have to plan and buy materials ahead of time (like I knew about the Polar Bear Day, so I bought extra books) and some, you might have to make it up as you go. For example, the Mozart Birthday, I was not very prepared, so I just pulled the book, some Safari musical instruments, and had Adrian play a violin (I have a video on my blog:). But, may be I shall put a yearly calendar on my blog with activities/holidays linked to it. Let me research that option – thank you for the idea:) With Love, Anya 🙂
Thank you Anya! Yes I live in RI and that website is very helpful, every day is something 🙂
Great! I am glad:) I like adding a theme to a week, in addition to Holidays. I created a Unit Study category, under which I added our Polar Region unit, Valentine’s, Dinosaur Unit (we are working on now). We will be doing in the future: Frog Unit, Bird Unit, Inside of the Body, Solar system etc.. it is fun for kids – they look forward to it. And a lot of activities, I create as we go, so there is a lot of improvisation 🙂
Sounds wonderful! I look forward to these 🙂