Roses Are Pink, Your Feet Really Stink

"Roses Are Pink, Your Feet Really Stink" by Diane deGroat

Years ago I saw the book Roses Are Pink, Your Feet Really Stink and had to buy it because it really helps bring up the issue of how words can affect us so deeply.  I use this book as a springboard for discussions about how to say and write positive things to one another.  I model how to do this by making every student in my class a beautiful written compliment heart.  I post them all on a bulletin board and then have the students write compliment hearts for each other.  Here is a PowerPoint file that you can change for your own students.
Valentine Compliment Hearts

I think this idea is especially useful if you have children in your classroom who are picked on by other students.  It's one of my pet peeves, but I just hate when children are thoughtlessly mean to other kids.

A friend gave me some upper- and lowercase foam fish for Christmas.  I thought my pre-k students would really enjoy playing with them, but they did not.  Since there's no way for them to check and see if they're right when they try to match them, arguments started in the center.  "That's not a lowercase p!  That's a b!"  So that night, I tried to think of an idea wherein the children could match uppercase letters to lowercase letters and have some sort of self-checking device to help them.  Therefore I made these upper- and lowercase letters that have a picture of the same object on the capital as well as the lowercase.  I'm selling them on TPT.

Self-checking alphabet matching game on hearts

I am a music fanatic!  I buy appropriate songs from iTunes and various stores, then I make different playlists for every month, to use in Calendar time.  Here are some fabulous songs for February, if you're looking for that special way to sweeten up math time for your kids:

"Valentine" by Mar Harmon:  This song is cute because it spells out I L-O-V-E Y-O-U.  I just write the words on cards and call up three students to stand and hold each word card while we sing the song.  You could also have each student hold an individual letter card to involve more children.

"Will You Be My Valentine" by Dr. Jean:  This song is totally awesome because it's sung to the familiar tune of "Do You Know The Muffin Man."

"Be My Valentine" by Jack Hartmann:  This song is more of a dance, where the kids can act out being a fish and a dog.  They copy your motions such as swimming, diving, jumping, and begging for a bone.

"The Year's Shortest Month" by Jack Hartmann:  The thing I like about this song is that it talks about February being the shortest month and it also states that on February 14 "we take time to say we care" with valentines.  This song also helps the children understand, when looking at the calendar, when Valentine's Day is going to occur.

I hope you enjoy these songs and ideas as much as I do.

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!