Valentine's Day 2011

I've gotten so behind posting all of our Valentine fun and I don't think I'm going to take the time to do any more posts for each since Valentine's Day is now over.... but real quick, for my friends that msg'd me and emailed asking about the last few Bible verses and crafts, here they are...

11 - 1 John 4:12 “No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.”  Craft - Just like Jesus is the light that lives in us, make a valentine luminary with the light shining out of the heart

12 - 1 Corinthians 13:1 “ If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.” - Craft - Make some Valentine cymbals or other instrument and sing songs of Praise to the Lord!

13 - Colossians 3:14 “Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds us all together in perfect harmony.”

Craft - Make Crazy Valentine headbands or hats to wear on Valentine’s Day!

14 - John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”  Craft - Decorate a cross with ‘God is Love’ on it.

We REALLY enjoyed all of our Valentine activities over here, it was great making the holiday last for so long! Thanks for my friends that wrote me and told me how much they were enjoying it too! :)

Our Short Week

It's been a busy week for us this week....Daddy had Monday off AND Friday! And when Daddy's home, our regular routine is turned a bit upside down!...But we LOVE having Daddy home, so that's ok! Then right in the middle of the week, we had MOPS, which was wonderful, but that was another 1/2 of a day taken up by something else. So our school week was a short one this week, but somehow we still managed to be pretty productive and get most everything that was on the schedule done. We just had some really full days on Tuesday and Thursday to make up for the rest of the week. :)

Joy was working so hard and doing great cramming a couple days worth of work into each day, that we had to take some time to rest, and do something really fun that we enjoy, to break up the day. I let her choose what she would like to do during that time and she asked to play Pick and Draw!

This is a favorite for the little artists in our house. The game is brilliant...it is a simple set of cards divided into five categories (face shape, hair, eyes, nose and mouth). We divided our cards up into their color coded categories and took turns drawing one from each to create our pictures. Here is one of Joy's...

The kids were laughing the whole time at their silly creations!

Here are some of Joy's silly faces after she added some color and bodies to them!

And some of Joshua's.  :)

It was an exciting week for Faith...she started drawing people for the first time! I remember when Joy and Joshua each started drawing people too, they did the same thing, as soon as they figured it out, they began drawing people over and over again on every picture they made. 

Faithy was really happy about it because she has been getting frustrated wanting to draw pictures of our family but not being able to put on paper what's in her head. She was so surprised by herself it was cute! She kept saying, "It worked! I drawed a people Mom!" :)

We saw probably 20 more people that she drew that day! She was so proud! We also enjoyed some of my printables I've been making and we did some sorting with colors and size and lots of counting, all Valentine themed! 

The other exciting thing she did was recognize all her numbers and put them in the right order all by herself! We had them all mixed up on the floor and we counted together as she searched for each number and placed them in line. This was the first time she did it without help! So it was a fun week of celebrating being 'a big girl' for her and so fitting since she's turning three on Saturday!

Love Bugs!

We've been doing Valentine fun for days now and no one seems to be getting tired of! The kids are really loving it. :) This week we enjoyed learning about the human heart and enjoyed some fun facts that I posted about over here on our other page.

One  of our favorite countdown to Valentine's Day activities has been all the fun we had with our 'Love Bugs' today! You can find the link to download them here on www.theprintableshare.com 

First I asked the kids, "What is Love?" and got all sorts of sweet answers...hugs and kisses, sharing, being happy, treating each other nice, doing special things, etc...

Then I sent them on a hunt for the Love Bugs that were going to tell us a little about 'What love is.'

Looking for the Love Bugs...

One of them had a treasure map stuck to it!!

Before we could follow the treasure map, we lined up all of our love bugs and read each one and talked about what each of the 'love is' statements meant. 

Then it was time to follow the treasure map!

The treasure map had both drawn directions to different places in the house, and also actions they had to do before they could go to the next place! Here they are doing jumping jacks....I like activities that will wear them out! :)

There favorite one was when they had to do the 'Love Bug Wiggle' while played a song!

Crawling like a Love Bug...

They had a few other steps to do first, but here they are with the 'treasure' they found at the end of it all!

I printed off some extra Love Bugs, both the ones with 'love is' statements and the blank ones. I gave each of the kids some to cut out, then they took turns gluing them on a big page and decorating it with stickers. On the blank ones I wrote the answers the kids gave me to the question, "What are some things that Mommy and Daddy do that make you feel loved?" Some of their answers surprised me and through this little activity, a little more about each of their personalities and 'love languages' was revealed to me. I think this is something I'll remember to do each Valentine's day as the kids grow and change. It's nice to know specific things that I can do that really make them feel loved and what that is one kid is sometimes is completely different from the next!

I love the tongue sticking out as she concentrates!....

Then I enjoyed a lovely puppet show by the Love Bugs and they taught me all about each of the 'love is' statements that they wore. It was great!

The Human Heart

Today we learned a little about the Human Heart. I printed off a picture of a heart diagram and we talked about the different parts and how it functions. They were pretty fascinated, and at the same time grossed out at the picture and didn't want to believe that their hearts didn't look like this...

I also found some fun facts for the kiddos, here were just a few of the favorites...

- Everyday the heart creates enough energy to drive a truck 20 miles!

- During an average lifetime, the heart will pump nearly 1.5 million gallons of blood - enough to fill 200 train tank cars!

- When the body is at rest, it takes only 6 seconds for the blood to go from the heart to the lungs and back, only 8 seconds to go to the brain and back and only 16 seconds to reach the toes and travel all the way back to the heart! 

There were many other really interesting ones as well, the kids really enjoyed it.  :) We tried finding our pulse on our wrists, but it was much more difficult than our necks.

We took our pulse at our resting rate as we were sitting there talking...

Then, we ran around the room for a couple minutes!

Afterwards we took our active heart rate and the kids were excited that it was so much faster!

We read in a few more of our books later in the day about exercise and taking good care of your heart.

We ended our heart study with a little treat (Mommy's new favorite!) A yummy heart shaped chocolate from the www.naturalcandystore.com - They are SO GOOD! Way better than a Hershey's Kiss or Dove bar...so delicious!

And Joy said that she's going to continue thinking that her heart looks like this, "because it's much prettier!"

Pipe Cleaners!

Here are a few more Valentine crafts our family has been enjoying this week with Pipe Cleaners...
We have them in abundance thanks to Oma and we are loving it! Joy told me this week that she "had no idea you could do so many things with pipe cleaners!" :) The kids have been busy making creatures and designs with them, it's been a lot of fun!

Pipe cleaner Valentine words and names...

And some adorable springy hearts...

A Few More Valentine Activities

We've been having fun here at the Adams' house, even though I haven't posted in a few days. In addition to Peter's 30th birthday, a 4-day weekend in lovely cold S. Korea, and Super Bowl, here are some of the other things we've been up to...

Button Hearts. Super cute and easy!

We made some heart prints out of our fists... If you make a fist and stamp the side of your hand into an ink pad then stamp it on the paper it makes a half of a heart. So if you do it with both hands and position them right next to each other, you'll have a whole heart!

He was pretty excited that it actually worked!...

Faithy's tiny prints...

After stamping them all, I cut them out and we decorated a Valentine sign with them.

One evening Peter entertained us with a ton of family pictures that he had gone through and pulled out to put on a slide show on the new t.v. It was pretty awesome!

The kids LOVED getting to see themselves on the big screen, they probably could have kept watching it for hours!

I had other plans for our Valentine activity that night, but this was much better....a lot more fun and a lot less planned and organized! I'm SO thankful for my husband that keeps our family balanced and keeps me from going overboard sometimes! He helps me to remember the point of it all when I start to get all wrapped up in 'my plan'...he's really amazing like that...and he does it all with a smile and endless patience! :)

 

 

Marble Painting was a fun quick project and one that I'd recommend to others with kiddos. 

We put plain paper hearts in a box with some globs of paint and marbles, then closed the box an shook it all around as hard as we could!

The shaking part was the most fun! :)

Another pretty addition to our window!