Patricia Bentham, author, kindergarten-lessons.com
Valentines Ideas
Valentines Ideas - ABC Puzzles
Materials:
- old educational supply catalogues
- 4 inch heart tracers or precut hearts
- scissors
- glue
Procedure:
- I love Valentine's ideas where the children do most of the work. These easy to make heart puzzles are fun for the children to make and share with their friends.
- Collect old educational supply catalogues and tear out a pile of pages featuring toys, dolls, puppets and books.
- Have children:
- trace and cut out a heart
- cut out and glue a picture of a toy or bookand glue it on one side of the heart
- use the catalogue pages to find and cut out the letter that the toy or book begins with
- cut the heart in half in a zigzag fashion
- mix up their hearts with other children's hearts and solve the puzzles
- Have the child print the letter on the back of the heart piece with the picture on it to make the puzzles self correcting.
Valentines Ideas - Story writing
Use stories, such as the Little Bear Books by Else Holmelund Minarik, to show that love is demonstrated by small acts of kindness.
Talk about how Little Bear showed kindness in the stories and how the children can show kindness to their friends and family.
Begin with a story starter ... Love is ...
Depending on the child's ability have them write a few letters and words and/or record the child's own Valentine's ideas.
Purchase Little Bear Books -
Little Bear's Friend 
Little Bear Audio CD Collection
Canadian shoppers visit Amazon.ca
Go from Valentines ideas to Valentine's craft ...
