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Thursday, January 19, 2012

Conversation Hearts

Do you ever get inspired when you walk through dollar stores?  I was walking through a Dollar Tree store thinking about using conversation hearts in February for centers, and then I found these plastic conversation hearts with the word already printed on them.  I also found this cute heart basket for a dollar.
A bucket of plastic conversation hearts from a dollar store
I'm going to have the children look at the hearts and match them to each other.  I'll fill another bucket with magnet letters and see if they can find the letters to spell out the words on a cookie sheet.  I also read on another blog that you can spray-paint cookie sheets to make them any color you want.  I'm thinking red or pink.

I made pattern strips that kids can use to lay out real conversation heart candies to duplicate color patterns.  I bought conversation hearts to check the colors, and these pattern strips use the exact same colors from the bag of candies.
Pattern Heart Strips

I usually place each child's candies in a Ziploc bag for them ahead of time so that there's no problem with students touching one another's candies.  A couple of great songs to go along with this pattern activity are "Everybody Do a Pattern" by Dr. Jean and "Make a Pattern" by Jack Hartmann.

I'm going to laminate this sorting mat and put it in Math Center for my students to sort conversation heart candies.  You could also use it with construction paper hearts if you want to cut them out. Sorting Mat Hearts

Finally, if you're doing skip counting here is a sheet where they can color each row of hearts a different color to help them group by 5's.
Heart Number Line 35 Full Page

More sweet ideas are coming soon!

6 comments:

  1. These are great ideas!! I do use noisemakers, but I'm not as consistent as I'd like to be. I have chimes, bells, and a piano. I want one that makes a Tarzan yell haha! That sounds amazing. I sing the kiddos' Alphafriends songs (from Houghton Mifflin Reading), Hickory Dickory, and Heads, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes probably the most. They listen to Disney CDs, Radio Disney, and ABC Mouse songs a LOT! What do you like to sing with your kinders?

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    1. Dr. Jean Feldman has so many wonderful ABC songs that I love to sing my with students. She's also the sweetest, nicest person in real life. I've seen her about 7 or 8 times at conferences, and I always get fresh, new ideas from her. If you're looking for story songs, Shauna Tominey is really good and she has her own web site too. Jack Hartmann has a lot of good hip-hop songs as well as math concept songs. My favorite song right now is "Penguin Dance Chant" by Jack Hartmann - it's about sequencing and the kids love it.

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  2. Love those conversation hearts and the GREAT freebies! So cute and perfect for my kiddos! I'm going to have to go and look at the dollar tree...haven't been there in awhile! As I was creeping on the comments above, I saw you talking about Jack Hartmann's Penguin Dance. We just did that one today for the first time and we LOVED it. We also did the 10 Silly Monkeys one!

    Kim
    Growing Up Teaching

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  3. Love the skip counting activity page! Thank you!!
    Jennifer
    First Grade Blue SKies

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    1. These freebies are great! I do the sorting page with my class, but we never thought to make a pattern page with the hearts. I think they'd love to have that one added in. Thanks for the great idea. Also, thanks for always leaving such nice, thoughtful comments on my blog!
      http://www.seabearskindergarten.blogspot.com

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  4. Dudley...you are amazing! I love the heart number line. I am so lucky to get to see you every week at work! You're an amazing person and teacher. The new K teacher asked how my first year of teaching K was and I told her YOU helped me out A LOT! Thank you!

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