Littles Learning Link Up: February 20, 2018- Sweet and Simple Heart People Craft

 Each month you will find:

• A seasonal round-up (usually toward the beginning of the month)
• Posts where I share what I have been up to with my early elementary children (including occasional highlight posts where I share how we used ideas that have been linked up here on Littles Learning Link Up).

Each week, I will host a link up, where you can share either what you have been up to recently, or old posts that may go with the theme.  Feel free to link up more than one post.

Each week I will continue to feature a couple of posts from those that have been linked up. 

I hope you will continue to share your wonderful posts, and I hope you will find something new to try with your child(ren).

It would be great for everyone to stop by and visit the other linked-up posts as well. Check them out, leave some comments, pin those that interest you. Let's make this a real party and socialize with each other.

What have we been up to?

Last week was a no-school week, but we managed to get quite a bit of work done anyway. The children were still using the online review products we are working on: Starfall for the younger two and UltraKey for the older two. Plus we are still working on our Ancient Egypt Timelines. But what amazed me the most is that the children were coming up with activities to do, such as Amelia teaching Hannah what she had learned about electricity, Amelia reading to Hannah about the Greek gods, Harold sewing, and the children making different water forms in our mud puddle outside. 

The warmer weather also gave us the opportunity to do our Diet Coke/Mentos experiment.

Last week's co-op fell on Valentine's Day, so I thought it would be fun to make Valentine's Heart People. I've done that with my kiddos in the past, but I don't think I ever did it with the preschool co-op class. 

Sweet and Simple Heart People Craft

Here's what you will need:

Construction paper (I used purple, red, and pink)

Large wiggle eyes

Glue sticks

White school glue

Pompoms

Prep before craft time:

I cut out big hearts for the bodies, and slightly smaller hearts for the heads. Then I cut out small hearts in different colors for the hands and feet, and tiny hearts for the nose. I strips of paper for the legs and arms. 

The first thing the children did was accordian fold the arms and legs. Some of the younger children did need some help with this step. You could just keep the strips flat, but I think they are so much cuter folded.

Then the arms and legs are glued onto what will be the back of the largest heart. This heart will look as if it is upside down, point to the top.

When the children were done gluing those on, they flipped them over and attached the head to the body. This heart faces the correct position.

Then we decorated our heart people. We glued hands and feet onto the ends of the paper strips. Then we glued on the wiggle eyes and tiny heart noses. The children used markers to draw on a mouth. They used the Thin Stix to decorate their heart person's shirt, then they added pompom buttons.

All done.

A couple of the children wanted to show off their creations.

Let's take a look at that review schedule real quick:

This week I will be sharing my review of: Bytes of Learning's UltraKey Online and next week I will share the review for Starfall's Home Membership. We are also reviewing a couple of a la carte products from Home School in the Woods, including the Ancient Egypt Timeline that I mentioned above. That review will be posting in March as will MathArt from NatureGlo's eScience. I am reading the book What Every Child Should Know Along the Way from Parenting Made Practical. And the girls are going to be making some 3-D Super Bead vehicles from Zirrly for Harold's birthday. Those reviews will also post in March. We just received Memoria Press's new Traditional Spelling II for Hannah. I will be sharing that review in April along with some books from Carole. P. Roman whose books we have reviewed a couple of times in the past. 

Here are some things I would like to share with you:

Fun With Dr. Seuss Round Up

Personally, I am looking forward to some warmer weather, so how about focusing on some springtime round ups. 

Creepy, Crawly, Buggy Round Up

Flower and Gardening Fun Literature and Craft Round Up

Now onto:

Littles Learning Link Up Features

On my last Littles Learning Link Up post, there were 6 wonderful posts linked up. I will be sharing two randomly selected post as there were no clicks last week.

Please, don't forget to stop by other posts that are linked up. See what catches your eye, stop by, pin the post to a relevant board, and perhaps leave a comment to let the author of the blog know you have been by for a visit. I know I appreciate others commenting and letting me know they have read my posts, so I am sure others do too.

This week's first randomly selected post is:

Mommies Reviews shared Valentine's Day Round Up for 2018

And here is this week's randomly selected most clicked on post.

Kristen from A Mom's Quest to Teach shared Fall Crafts: Owl Puppet

Join the Party!

I would love to have you join in this week! What sort of activities do you do with your young children? Do you have some favorite activities you would like to share? I invite you to link up below. I will be pinning posts on one of my relevant boards, and I would love to feature some of the activities each week from what is linked up.

Please know I may share a picture from your post and link back to it, along with sharing how we used your idea in our school time. By linking up you are giving me permission to use a picture from your post. I will ALWAYS give credit and link back. Additionally, if you choose to try out any of the ideas with your child, please make sure you give credit where credit is due.

Linky will be open through Monday night, to give me time to check out all the posts and get the Features organized. Please take the time to visit some of the other wonderful posts linked up.

No button currently, and there won't be one until I can figure it out seeing as Photobucket has changed things. Feel free to still share the picture in place of the button. Just link it to my Littles Learning Link Up permalink please.

I am sharing over at

An InLinkz Link-up

Valentine's Day Craft: Valentine's Day Heart Mouse Cards

Today we made two different heart animal crafts in the preschool class at co-op. I will be sharing one today, and one tomorrow. This first craft goes with the book, Mouse's First Valentine by Lauren Thompson. This is one of the books that I featured in my Valentine's Day Literature and Craft Round Up the other day.

I love doing shape crafts with the children, so when I woke up this morning, I decided it would be fun to do some heart animals with them. There are tons of versions of Heart Mice on the internet, so I don't know where this idea originated from. As usual, I looked at the different ideas, and came up with one that would work for us with the available supplies. 

The mouse's body is just a heart folded in half, then we added some heart ears, circle eyes, whiskers and a tail.

Here are the supplies you will need:

Red construction paper

Pink construction paper

White construction paper

Black crayon or marker

Glue stick

I cut the heart bodies our of red paper and folded them in half. Then I cut little hearts out of pink paper, and smaller hearts out of red paper. I cut little white circles for eyes. I cut out little pink triangles and snipped narrow strips out of it to make the whiskers. And a thin, narrowing piece for a tail.

Because the book is about a valentine that the one mouse makes for her little brother, I decided the mouse would also be a Valentine's Day card. So, our first step was tracing the child's hand inside the card. The other teacher and I wrote "I Love You" on the card and those children who could write their names wrote them. We wrote the names on the cards of the children who cannot yet write.  

Then they glued the smallest heart onto the medium sized heart. This was then glued close to the point.

Then they colored a black circle onto the white eye.

The whiskers were attached close to the black nose we colored in, and the eye was glued on between the whiskers and the ear. Then the tail was attached on the inside of the card. 

Valentine's Day Mice Cards

Getting Ready For Valentines Day: Heart People

We haven't done much yet to get ready for Valentine's Day which is shockingly in just 2 days. This year I decided we would make our heart people again as they fit in so well with the MFW unit we are currently on. We are discussing how God made us wonderful, which are our Words to Remember for the Uu: Us Unit. We have been discussing our 5 senses and talking about our body parts (which also fit in well with making Mat Man with Handwriting Without Tears, stay tuned for a review of this great handwriting curriculum later this month).
As we were already building people I thought the girls could each build a Heart Person to help decorate. We made them quite similar to the ones we made 2 years ago. You can see them here.

Here are this year's Heart People.

I traced a big heart and a medium size heart onto the paper in the color of their choice. Tabitha and Amelia cut out their own, while I cut Hannah's for her. Then I cut out a bunch of little hearts for them to choose from for eyes, noses, hands and feet. I used my paper cutter to cut 1 inch strips for the arms and legs (once again in the girls' choice of color). After the girls glued on their eyes and noses they used a pencil to draw a mouth on. Then they glued everything together.

I love simple yet cute crafts, don't you?

Montessori Time

Well the girls used the Montessori materials sporadically this week. The one that held their attention the longest was the heart picks:

Sorry the pictures are a bit dark.

Here they are using the spooning with cotton balls. The cotton balls were what we used at the Montessori I worked at, with the toddlers.

Yes, she tended to use her hands to put the cotton balls on the spoon.

Tabitha seemed to enjoy working with tonging with the hearts. Unfortunately, the tongs came up missing and Amelia tore some of the mini cupcake liners off. Without being able to find the tongs I didn't worry about replacing the papers. Here are a couple of pictures from when it did get used.

She also seemed to enjoy the matching heart shapes activity I found at Carissa's site.

Tabitha also decided to try some tracing, all on her own. I looked over and she had taken one of the foam hearts and was tracing it.

For more Montessori activities head over to One Hook Wonder