Today's big news is that Jeremy was able to walk with a walker. First he took just a few steps and then he was able to walk all the way from his bed to the bathroom. The theme for the day was escape! He decided he didn't want to be at the hospital anymore so he kept asking my parents to take him on walks in the wheelchair. He had them get in the elevator and took it down to 1 which is the basement. My mom noticed he was pulling up google maps on his phone and was telling them to stop and then go while looking at it. Then he must have given up and told them to hurry up and get back to the room. Upon their return he told them, "What a waste of time! Next time figure out how to get out of here before we leave." He didn't give up though and each time they'd head out for a walk he'd grab his Gatorade and a cookie that was in a bouquet sent by my Uncle Dan and Aunt Monica. Guess he figured he'd need some fueling for his travels. He is starting to remember things for longer periods of time. He saw my mom had his car keys and asked for them constantly throughout the day. Tonight will be the first time they have him on feeding at night and then turn it off during the day in hopes that he will begin to have more of an appetite to eat actual food. Now on to a post about our weekly learning theme...
Valentine's Day is my favorite holiday, read more about why here, so I always have so much fun with Valentine's Day related holidays. It's so much fun to have hearts around and to talk about love and why we love each other. I enjoyed doing some of the same activities as last year and coming up with some new things to do now that Carter is older and needs challenged in different ways. Check out last year's learning theme here.
Listed below are the objectives I am focusing on for the themed weeks. I have updated our objectives a second time because I felt like we were ready to focus on something new. I plan to continue to implement activities to practice and reinforce our previous objectives while putting more emphasis on our new objectives. Some of them won't necessarily be targeted with specific activities during our weeks, but I wanted to list them to help me remember to practice them continually. The highlighted objectives are ones Carter received exposure to during our theme this week:
- Continue to improve fine motor skills and drawing (specifically I'm looking for him to be able to copy a circle and a square as well as draw a person with 2-4 body parts).
- Understand same and different.
- Accurately tell stories as well as retell the story from a book.
- Use age appropriate scissors.
- Develop a better understanding of time (for example, be able to describe when things happen using morning, afternoon, night)
- Group objects based on a category (sort by defining feature).
- Count and understand what the numbers mean.
- My grandma sent the kids a Valentine's Day package that included some heart cookie cutters. When Carter saw them he just had to play with them so I pulled out the rest of the heart cookie cutters we have and our Play Doh and he had a blast making hearts. When it was time to clean up he didn't want me to put the hearts he had made away!
- I put together a sensory bin using the same materials I used last year. The base was fake rose petals with foam hearts, heart bead necklaces, heart shaped cookie cutters, and heart stones thrown in. The heart stones and foam hearts were small enough I was worried about Elise swallowing them if I wasn't sitting right there with her so I also made her a seperate sensory bin she could play with while I was cooking or cleaning. In her smaller bin I put fake rose petals for the base along with a heart bead necklace and some large foam hearts. Elise's favorite thing to do with the big sensory bin was dig around to find the small foam hearts and put them in her mouth to chew on them. I was okay with that as long as she left a section of the heart hanging out of her mouth. If she put the whole thing in her mouth, I put the bin up.
Elise playing with her small sensory bin. 
Carter playing with the large sensory bin. 
- Last year we all decorated our Valentine bags together as a family. I wanted to do that again this year but knew if Elise did it at the same time as us, I wouldn't get the chance to decorate my bag at all. Elise woke up earlier than Carter from an afternoon nap one day so I helped her decorate hers then. That consisted of her choosing the foam stickers she wanted and me putting them on her bag. The rest of us did ours one evening after dinner.
All of our Valentine's Day bags hanging up. 
- I found some pink sparkly goo that came in a heart shaped container in the dollar spot at Target. I got it for Carter to play with. He loved it but got upset when it was no longer in the shape of a heart so I'd help him put it back in the container to take the shape of a heart.
- We used the conversation heart candies for some activities. First we sorted the hearts by color. Then we made a graph by putting the like colored hearts into tall lines. I had Carter look at the graph to tell me which color had the most hearts and which had the least. We counted the hearts of each color to see if he was correct. Then we played with the hearts by making patterns. I would make a simple AB pattern and describe it to Carter, then I'd ask him what color would come next and he'd add the color of candy that would come next. He wanted to make his own pattern and I was surprised when he made an AAB pattern, but after a few repetitions he started adding random colors which was more what I had expected.
Sorting the conversation hearts based on color. 
Looking at our conversation heart graph. 
Adding to my pattern. - For some fine motor practice I put some heart stones into an ice cube tray so Elise could reach in and pull them out. Carter saw her doing it and wanted to try it too. It's so funny that an activity he would otherwise not be interested in, he just has to do when he sees Elise doing it!
- I glued hearts on some thicker paper cards Leina gave me. I glued 1-5 hearts on the cards and made two sets. We used the cards to play memory which Carter wasn't very into. Then we used the hearts to play "Go Heart" or "Go Fish". At first Carter wasn't sure if he liked the game but ended up thinking it was hilarious and loving it!
Playing memory with our heart cards. 
Playing "Go Hearts". - The cookie cutters we used when playing with Play Doh I put into the sensory bin when we were done. One day we sorted the hearts based on size and color. Then we talked about how they were alike and different. Then Carter noticed he could put the smaller ones inside the bigger ones and enjoyed doing that. After that he started putting them on his leg which he also found highly entertaining.
- We used some large numerals I found here to practice counting. I told Carter what the number was and then we counted out that many hearts to glue onto the number. It was fun to practice together and I figure it is something Carter can practice with Jeremy later on too. Carter was done after the number 5 so we stopped there.
- I have a bunch of conversation heart small pillows I bought after Valentine's Day one year at Target. I pulled those out and we borrowed one of my parents' taller laundry baskets to shoot them into. Carter and I played together at first and he enjoyed it so much he kept playing and was entertained by it the entire time I fixed our lunch.
- On Valentine's Day the kids got to take a special bath with materials from their sensory bin.
- I found an awesome Heart emergent reader here which Carter enjoyed reading because he could do it all by himself.
- I pulled out all the different Valentine's Day stamps we have along with a red stamp pad and let Carter go to town. Often times our crafts are planned to where I facilitate what he does. I like to make sure I sprinkle in activities where he is in charge and chooses to do it however he wants. Of course, that is always a big hit! Carter saw where I got everything from so he was randomly pulling the stamp pad and stamps out to make pictures which was fine except for sometimes he would decide to make his handprint and that stamp ink is hard to wash off!
- My favorite thing to do leading up to Valentine's Day is make valentines! I pulled out foam heart stickers, hearts I punched out of construction paper, and the stamps. Carter worked to make valentines for all of his grandparents and even "wrote" on the inside. It was the cutest when he told me what he had written. I love that he gets so into making his valentines!
- Elise also got to make her own valentines by using pink and red finger paints. She surprises me each time she fingerpaints because so does it so differently than Carter ever did! I ended up having to mop the floor when she was done because she would just slap down into the paint really hard which made the paint go flying. It was hilarious and she got mad range, getting paint on our area rug in the playroom while we were working at the kitchen table! The great thing about her just slapping her hand down was that she put lots of sweet, little handprints all over the paper and there's nothing cuter than that!
- When I saw an adorable footprint love bug craft here, I knew we would be making it for our Valentine's Day handprint or footprint craft. There was also a really cute bee so I let Carter decide which one he wanted to make and then Elise would make the other one. Carter picked the bee so Elise made the ladybug and they turned out so adorable! I made one for our 8x10 seasonal frame with both their footprints on it and then for the ones going in the mail I had to make their footprints on different pieces of paper so they'd fit in an envelope so they made separate little valentines to send.
My big 8x10 Valentine's Day picture. 
The separate valentines we made and sent in the mail.
- I'm such a sucker for pink, hearts, and any other Valentine's day decor. When I was grocery shopping I saw strawberry flavored mini wheats and excitedly snatched them up as a special Valentine's Day week breakfast for Carter. I told him they were a special treat to celebrate Valentine's Day so he called it his Valentine's Day cereal when he asked for it in the mornings and that made me so happy!
- We made lots of heart shaped goodies. First we made Oreo truffles during the week. Then Carter helped me make a heart shaped pizza and helped me decorate a heart shaped cake on Valentine's Day. I do the heart shaped cake the easy way where you bake the cake in a square pan and a circle pan. Then you cut the circle cake in half. I chose a strawberry cake with chocolate fudge frosting because I really wanted chocolate covered strawberries. Then we ended up making some of those too.
Decorating the Oreo truffles with pink and red sprinkles. 
He tried so hard to be careful, but the sprinkles just came out way too fast! 
- For lunch on Valentine's Day we had a little picnic on the living room floor while we watched a short Valentine's Day themed show. I made all of Carter's food into heart shapes. He had a grilled cheese, strawberries, and sweet potato all in heart shapes and then I threw some grapes on his plate to give him some more fruit.
- I had some thick cardboard which had been part of some packaging that I'd saved. I cut 2 hearts out of it and we each decorated one to make our own heart puppet. We named our puppets and played with them. Carter named his Hearty and I named mine Heartalina. I used mine to play peek-a-boo with Elise and then Carter wanted to play hide and seek with Heartalina so he would hide and she would count and then search for him. Then he would have me hide her and he would search for her. He was cracking me up because he would tell us where he hid and would even pop out at us! It was a lot of fun!
Elise playing peek-a-boo with Heartalina. 
Heartalina and Hearty. 
- We sang Skidamarink and talked a little bit about time of day. Then we wrote a book about things Carter likes to do at different times of day using the same sentence structure as the song.
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| Carter writing his book. |
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| The pages of Carter's book. |
Field Trip/Interactive Experience:
- One of Carter's friends invited us to a Valentine's Day themed playdate. His mom had Valentine themed treats out and a table set up with all kinds of materials for creating valentines. I was excited to pull out Valentine's Day outfits for the kids so they could be festive.
A picture of their Valentine's Day outfits before we headed to the playdate. 
Making valentines during the playdate. Elise loved playing with the foam heart stickers!
- In a small town near us there is an art studio that does art classes for toddlers. One of my mom's groups set up a special art class and we decided to go. The art project for the day was a heart canvas. The teacher already had glue on the canvas in the shape of a heart. Then the kids placed yarn on the glue to make a heart. She then showed them how to get a little water and mix it with the paint to make the paint a bit runnier. Of course, Carter thought that meant he needed a ridiculous amount of water, but whatever! When the paintings were dry she gave the kids a little bit of glitter paint to make their first initial inside the heart. The project turned out adorable and the teacher was so patient and sweet. Carter was having a serious off day and melted down when we first arrived to the point where I was turning around to leave when the teacher came over and sweetly and calmly talked him into coming over to watch her work.
- Carter was invited to a Valentine's Day party at a friend's house the Saturday before Valentine's Day. He enjoyed all the treats, playing with his friends, and passing his valentines out to everyone.
- I Love You, Little Monkey by Alan Durant
- Love Is You and Me by Monica Sheehan
- I Am Small by Emma Dodd
- Everyone Needs Love by Sophie Piper
- The Day It Rained Hearts by Felicia Bond
- Kiss Me, I'm Perfect by Robert Munsch
- Love You Forever by Robert Munsch
- I Love Valentine's Day by Hans Wilhelm
- Hugs by Alice McLerran
- Love, Splat by Rob Scotton
- Valentine Friends by Ann Schweninger
- How Spider Saved Valentine's Day by Robert Kraus
- I Love Hugs by Lara Jones
- I Like It When by Mary Murphy
- Valentine Mice by Bethany Roberts
- The Best Thing About Valentines by Eleanor Hudson
- Franklin's Valentine by Paulette Bourgeois
- Somebody Loves You, Mr. Hatch by Eileen Spinelli
- Counting Kisses by Karen Katz
- Bear in Love by Daniel Manus Pinkwater
- If You'll Be My Valentine by Cynthia Rylant
- My Heart Is Like a Zoo by Michael Hall
- Llama Llama I Love You by Anna Dewdney
- I Love You with All My Heart by Noris Kern
- Just Because You're Mine by Sally Lloyd-Jones
- Valentine's Day Is... by Gail Gibbons
- A Kiss Like This by Mary Murphy
- Big Hugs, Little Hugs by Felicia Bond
- The I Love You Book by Todd Parr
- We Love Each Other by Yusuke Yonezu
- Bear in Love by Samantha Davis
- The Way I Love You by David Bedford and Ann Jones
- Melvin's Valentine by Jon Scieszka
- Happy Love Day, Daniel Tiger by Becky Friedman and Jason Fruchter
- Happy Valentine's Day, Curious George by N. Di Angelo
- Pride and Prejudice: A BabyLit Counting Primer by Jennifer Adams
- Romeo and Juliet: A BabyLit Counting Primer by Jennifer Adams
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