Fluttering By With A Valentine "Hi!"

These waxed-winged beauties are made with wax paper and melted crayon shavings.

They are quick, easy and fun to make and look lovely stuck to a window, so that the sun can shine through, or fluttering across a bulletin board for February.

Here's how to make them:

Run off the body part of the butterfly on a variety of colors of construction paper.

Rough cut them and stack them into color piles so that students can choose their favorite.

While students are working on a tabletop lesson, call them individually to the table.

Students choose a color or colors of crayons that they want to shave.

Students hold the sharpener over a sheet of wax paper big enough to be able to trace 3 hearts on.

You need it larger so that when the shavings melt, they do not run outside of the wax paper.

Make sure the wax paper is on a mini ironing board or a folded towel.

When the child has enough shavings sprinkled around the paper, lay a second piece of wax paper on top.

Using an iron on the lowest setting, slowly melt the shavings. Be careful that the pools do not run off the paper.

Let cool a few seconds and have the child step to the side to trace the heart template onto the wax paper.

Once done, she takes her paper back to her seat and cuts out the hearts and glues them to the back of her butterfly’s thorax.

When they are done, they can bring their butterfly up to you, so that you can give them glue dots for their wiggle eyes and rhinestones that they have picked out.

These look fabulous on a window. Simply put a small piece of folded tape on the thorax and stick.

As a writing extension, children can make another paper heart and write, “Flying by with a Valentine hi.” Or “My heart flutters for you.” 

Click on the link to view/download the Wax Paper Butterfly Valentine.

Thank you for visiting today.  Feel free to PIN anything that you think others may find worthwhile. 

"Writing, the art of communicating thoughts to the mind through the eye, is the great invention of the world...enabling us to converse with the dead, the absent, and the unborn, at all distances of time and space. " -Abraham Lincoln

1-2-3 Come Make Some paper Love With Me!

Whenever there was something special going on during a particular month, my 1^st graders used to ask everyday: “When is our Halloween party?”, “When’s the fieldtrip?” “How long before we can open our Valentines?” etc. 

Sound familiar?  I decided to put up a seasonally- colored paper chain, for however many days in that month.

I’d link them in a pattern so that I’d have a quick teachable moment in full view.

Whatever we were doing that was extra special: parties, trips, visitors, I’d put an appropriate sticker on that link, so when a student asked a question like the above, I could say, “Well let’s figure that out,” and I’d refer them to the paper chain.

If you like this idea you can get the pattern for a cute dangler, that you can change each month. 

The apple piece is for September; there's a pumpkin for October etc.  I stick them on with Velcro dots. Hang the paper chains from that.

Heart Paper Chain:

I wanted to make a special paper chain for February, so I made the links in a shape.

This is easy to do.  Simply cut strips of colored paper on the paper cutter that are 1 inch wide, and as long as the paper.

Construction paper works fine, but cardstock paper holds the heart shape better, and is much more durable.

Fold a strip in half.  Bend the open ends in ‘til you have a rounded top heart, and staple them together. (See photo.)

As you can see, I made my strips white, red and pink and will have an ABC-ABC pattern going.

Fold as many strips as you need, but don’t staple them until you have looped them through each other to make the chain.

You can make this even more interesting, by writing a “secret message” on the paper strips before you put them together.

I did the paper chain activity during my calendar time, or before story time, as I hung the chain by my rocking chair.

After students have counted, recognized the colors and pattern, and you’ve done whatever else math-wise, you want to do with the paper chain, call on a quiet child to gently tear the end strip off and read the secret message.

These are so easy to make that I cut up a variety of colored construction paper strips and my Y5's enjoy stringing as many as they can before the timer rings. Younger students can simply make one; punch a hole in the top side and make a yarn loop for them to hang on a doorknob. 

Another thing you can do with them is to make a heart wreath for your door.  Double-sided scrapbook paper turns out lovely.  This would be fun for older students who are able to use a stapler on their own.

Scroll down for more things to do with this idea + the link for the packet.

Thanks for visiting today.  Feel free to PIN away. Hope you can stop by tomorrow for more heart activities.

"It is a thousand times better to have common sense without education than to have education without common sense." - Robert G. Ingersoll

1-2-3 Come Do Some Candy Heart Activities With Me

A Sweet Way To Learn!

I’m so excited! Last year I found the Acme Heart Maker site where you could type in 4-letter words on candy hearts.  I went crazy making some cute CVC words for you, but was a bit bummed because the letters only print in all caps.  However, they do look just like real candy hearts, which are also printed in all caps. 

While working on this article, I found cryptogram.com where you can type in up to 11 upper or lowercase letters! Wahoo! 

 How perfect to make a surprise heart note for all of your students, or allow them keyboard practice, and let them make their own heart or message, in an independent computer-center activity. I even made one for my husband, and taped it to his bathroom mirror.  He chuckled this morning. 

Some school's 100 Day lands on or close to Valentine's Day I made up a 100 Day candy heart as a cute note for your kiddo's.  If you want, attach a box of the conversation hearts. 

The Dollar sells them 4 in a pack.  There's also smaller candy heart cards.  Use them for Memory Match or "I Have; Who Has?" color games.  Click on the link to view/download the 100 Day With Candy Hearts packet.

Of course my brain was working over time trying to think of the zillion ways I could use this. I got out my Dolch word list and made a complete set of Conversational Hearts from all of the lists Pre-Primer through 3^rd grade.

You can do several things with these.  Simply use them as anchor charts, or print them off and laminate them. Make Memory Match games, put them up on your word wall for February, have students put them in alphabetical order, or have students choose several and make sentences with them.

Play a whole-group game and put the laminated hearts in a box, have students take one out identify the word(s). If they cannot they are out of the game.   Another way to play this is “Kaboom!” Pass around the candy heart cards.  Go around the circle.

Children read their word(s).  If someone has a bomb card, everyone yells “Kaboom!” and you start over.  The person holding the bomb, can remain in or be out of the game depending on how you want to play.

Click on the link to view/print the Dolch Word Candy Hearts  Click on the link to view/print the bomb cards.

There are many math centers you can do with candy hearts: patterning, guess-timation, counting, graphing, measurement etc.  I've also included puzzles for centers. 

Pictured is an example of a guess-timation sheet.  There's also one where students guess how many candy hearts will go around the heart shape.

I made numeric candy heart anchor charts as well as trace and write the number worksheets.

There are 2 graphing extensions: 1 for graphing your students' favorite flavor of candy heart, the other for graphing their favorite color candy heart.

I’ve included some fun new skill sheets for you in More Fun With Candy Hearts click on the link to view/print this 33-page mini conversation heart unit.  Last year’s booklet was Fun With Candy Hearts.

Finally, I made up 208 traceable number and letter flashcards with covers so that your students can make Candy Heart Itty Bitty booklets for counting, skip counting by 2’s, 3’s, 5’s, 10’s, color words and colors, + the alphabet (upper and lowercase letters). These also make great Memory Match Games too! Click on the link to view/print Candy Heart Itty Bitty Books

Want some more fun things to do with candy hearts?

National Geographic has a Candy Hearts Bingo Game.  Click on the link to check it out.

Allcrafts.net has a tutorial of how to make your own candy hearts.  Click on the link to check that out.

Make these lovely snowflake valentines out of a coffee filter and put some candy hearts on them for a cute party favor. Click on the link to see how the Peppermint Plum Blog Spot does it!

Thanks for visiting.  Feel free to pin away.  I hope you can stop by tomorrow.  I'm finishing up candy heart packets for contractions, opposites, and colors!

"You don't have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great." -Zig Ziglar