Posts Tagged ‘Valentine’s Day’
We were listening to our Bari Koral station on Pandora today when Brent said to me, “I’m so excited for Bari’s new album to come out! When is that again?” “Why it’s Valentine’s Day, dear!” I replied. It’s a cheesey intro, I know. But it was a real conversation. So if you, like us, love Bari Koral, I thought I’d share her news with you.
We’ve loved Bari Koral since our first listen through of Rock and Roll Garden in 2009. We even had an interview with her on the release of Rock and Roll Garden in Jan 2010. Then we adored her first music video for The Backpack Song. We never tire of Bari Koral’s music. And so we’re really excited to receive an advance copy of her CD soon so we can share our review. To whet your appetite, here’s a sneak peak at her new album with the song Anna and the Cupcakes:
We can’t wait to hold the new album in our hands! Yeah, Bari Koral. You rock, girl!
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We started our Valentine’s celebrations with these balloons my mom bought the girls at the mall on Saturday.
We placed the valentine’s cards we got from our valentine exchange on the map showing where each card came from. Some are pretty close to us and other very far away. It was fun to talk to the girls about all the different places where we sent cards and then where got cards.
Here’s our table set for dessert. Brent brought us home roses. He brought each of the girls their own flower. They loved to flowers and having their own, but they loved playing swards with the long plastic containers the roses came in more! I made a tres leches cake from a recipe I saw on the Food Network. I made everything pink to go with the Valentin’es theme. Unfortunately, the cake is much better looking that it was tasting 
The cake didn’t cook evenly since our oven is bizarre and didn’t soak up all the milk mixture. The whipped topping was perfect, though and I scraped it off and ate it plain! The present you see to the right of the cake was a Wow! Wow! Wubbzy! Halloween video that Brent found at a great price (go figure!) and got for the girls.
Brent had to go back to school and study for his very difficult test today (that was actually canceled because of a snowstorm) so the girls and I sat down to watch a few episodes of Wubbzy before bed. My mom and I both dozed off while the girls were enthralled with Wubbzy’s adventures.
That pretty much wraps up our Valentine’s Day celebrations.
How did you celebrate Valentine’s Day?
Happy Valentine’s Day. Hope it’s one filled with love and friendship for you and your little ones! Here’s a favorite song of ours. I shared it last year, as well as this awesome nesting heart project.
Nesting Hearts
Sammi loves to throw things! I think it came from another episode of the Sesame Street Podcast: Basketball. She shows me how to throw the ball just like in the video. It’s so fun.
In keeping with the Valentine’s Day theme, since it IS tomorrow, I thought I’d introduce you to a classic game of bean bag toss, Valentine-style. I made these bags (they actually have rice, not beans) out of this cute, soft, pink fabric I found in my stash. Then I found this fun, already-decorated, very pink box and voila, instant Valentine fun!
There are so many variations for throwing the bags into the box. You can see how far your little one can throw. Move the box (or your child) a little each time the bag goes in the box. You can see how high they can throw it and have it land in the box. Try tossing it underhand or overhand. Try standing right next to the box, hold the bag to your nose and drop it in. The box is just a target, something that motivates the action. The bag doesn’t really need to land in the box every time. Help your child experiment with throwing the bean bag.
It takes a lot of fine motor skills to open your fingers to let go, especially when your arm is already moving. Children need to practice letting go just like they need to practice picking things up. Both help develop muscle control in the fingers which is essential for using utensils or writing.
Find as much pink or red as you can today to turn everyday play into Valentine’s Day play! If you are not finding a lot of already-pink things, cut out some pink hearts and decorate a box or bucket so it becomes a special Valentine’s Day toy.
Happy Valentine’s Day!
Nesting hearts are a great way to talk about size with your little one. You can use different size cookie cutters or cut out the different sized hearts and talk about which ones are big which ones are small. You can even compare and ask you child to find the bigger heart or the smaller heart.
Toddlers are just beginning to classify objects, meaning they can separate one type object from another but only based on one difference between the two categories (dinosaur toys versus car toys). Their understanding of size and color, though, are still quite limited. It’s fun to talk about color and size with little ones, but they may not be ready to permanently know that information. Toddler minds are bursting with so much new information everyday that it takes a very long time to sort out all that information and make sense of it. That’s the job of toddlerhood! For that reason, it’s good to plant the seeds of what they need to know (everything!) and wait for those seeds to take root and grow. While we’re waiting, we keep playing the same games again and again.
Back to the hearts! These fun hearts can also be turned into Valentine’s Day decorations. Layer the hearts from biggest to smallest and glue them together. You can further decorate them with ribbon, glitter, cardboard cutouts, anything you have on hand. To give some depth I used foam squares. Then I attached string and/or ribbon to hang them up with. You could also use yarn. I hung them between the kitchen and living room where the ceiling drops down.
Happy Valentine’s Day!
Tony Chestnut (Toe Knee Chest Nut) is a cute song that helps you say I love you to your little one!
Happy Valentine’s Day!
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