Sunday, February 6, 2011

February: Valentine Fun and Black History Month Activities

Our family's handprints holding up a heart (with plenty of excess glue, courtesty of Miss E) Is she saying there's room for more hands? :)
Valentine decor made super-simple: hang plastic heart cookie cutters from ribbon around your kitchen/dining area light fixture. This makes an excellent "mobile" for infants and toddlers and adds some Valentine cheer to your home.

Ready-to-bake stoplight cookies! Yum!





Miss E's "I Have a Dream" collage.



Sweethearts!





Happy February!

I've never been a big fan of Valentine's Day. I don't like flowers (I'm allergic), traditional chocolate (I like fancy stuff), and I'm not one for jewelry beyond a few key pieces I wear often. I'm a vegetarian, so no steak dinners here.

But now that we have little one's, Valentine's Day calls for Valentine decor around the house, a little gift (this year, a book for each girl that fits her likes---for Miss E a book on going to the potty, and for Baby E, a book on bath time since she finally likes taking a bath), maybe some heart-shaped PB and J sandwiches, etc. We're planning a family Valentine dinner at a restaurant (probably St. Louis Bread Co---nothing fancy) where the girls will wear their tutus (of course!).

Great books to read this Valentine's Day include...
That's Love (Beautifully colorful!)
Kiss Kiss (Fun book with unique illustrations)
A Special Kind of Love (For dads and sons---beautiful book!)
TRUELOVE (Great for pet lovers)
Henry In Love (A blueberry muffin brings two young friends together---so sweet!)
Sugar Cookies: Sweet Little Lessons on Love (Love everything about this book!)
You Are My I Love You
You and Me


Then there's Black History Month. A dear friend of mine sent me several websites that offer ideas for your little ones to creatively celebrate this month. Check out Gayle's Preschool Rainbow, Barbara Shelby's suggestions, and Family Education.

So far, we've made stoplight cookies (simply use a standard cookie recipe, we used PB, shape into rectangles, and then line up red, yellow, and green M&Ms to represent the lights before baking) to celebrate the man who invented the stop light. We glued cotton balls to a blue sheet of construction paper and wrote "I Have a Dream" on it to celebrate Martin Luther King. We traced each family member's hand on a shade of paper that matched his/her skin tone and glued the hands together which hold up a heart. I printed out a Rosa Parks coloring sheet for my daughter to color, and we're going to illustrate Langston Hughes' "Dreams" poem. And as usual, we'll be reading from our large collection of African American-geared books. You can find many books geared toward AA history in a box below my title called "Rachel's Sugary Sweet Suggestions."

So February, a month I usually dreaded with it's excessive coldness and red roses, has now become a favorite time of year in my household!

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