I love Valentine's Day. Pink is such a cheerful color, and it seems like people are just nicer around the middle of February. Being surrounded by chocolate doesn't hurt either. Bringing a bit of this "love"ly holiday into our learning always seems to excite the kids. (Sorry, I couldn't help it!)
I love activities that we can use in many ways. Since our space is limited, (and I may not be the most organized person), it makes life so much easier. I also don't have tons of prep time, so having one versatile set that I can use to teach many skills is always amazing. These are some of the ways I use this Valentine's Alphabet & Number Set in my TeacherspayTeacher store. They do take a little time to cut out, but considering how many activities they can be used for it is totally worth it. It includes a colored version with two different pinks, a red, and a purple, as well as a black and white version, which I love because I can print them in any color I want!
I try to always have a themed alphabet hanging in our learning space. It not only makes the room cuter, but also has some use to it. It's great to be able to refer to the letters whenever we need to.
My daughter knows most of her uppercase letters, so we clipped the lowercase letters onto the larger hearts. I love how this contains two sizes, so we can easily have a visual for the idea of "big" letters and "small" letters.
I also like to display a number line in our room. I keep it on our dry-erase easel so she can refer to it while she works.
There are so many math activities you can use with these hearts. The larger size works great as a counting mat for young learners.
This is one of our favorite activities. I lay the large numbered hearts out, and she orders them and count the correct number of hearts. (She can use the number line for reference if she gets stuck!) We did this with snowman cutouts and pompoms this winter, and she still loves it!
If your learners are starting to add (or subtract, multiply, divide, etc.), these hearts are perfect for modeling math problems! We use the large numbers as number mats in our problem, but you could also use the small ones. Because we are just starting out with number sentences, I used the smaller math symbols so she could easily find the numbers and tell them apart from the symbols.
You can also model a problem and have them find the correct numbers to complete the sentence.
The big hearts also make great phonics mats. You can have your kids go on a scavenger hunt for the beginning sound. We found hearts for our letter H, because we currently have lots of those laying around! But you can find a few and have them try to see how many other objects they can find to add to the mat. You can even leave them as a display in the classroom.
You can also have them match upper and lower case numbers. We like to pick a few letters at a time and make a memory match game. You could make it a bit easier by printing the uppercase letters in one color and the lowercase in another. Great for an easy differentiation!
The small hearts also make a great tool for practicing spelling words. We are starting our sight words, so that's what we have been practicing, along with our names.
You can also use small objects to practice letter formation by tracing the letters or numbers.
There are a few blank hearts included. We took one of the large blank hearts and wrote "pink heart" on it and added it to our sensory bin, since that is the shape and color we are focusing on.
You can also add letters or numbers to your sensory bin. You can have the kids choose a number card, and count that number of objects from the sensory bin.
These are just a few of my favorite ways to use these hearts with my littlest learners. Can you think of any other activities these would be good for? Leave your ideas in the comments below!?
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