Joyful Learning in February

February seemed really short. I know that it is shorted than other months but only by a couple days - it seemed a week or two shorted than it should have been...I think I lost time, or my mind, while Craig was working nights. But we still managed to have some fun.

We started off with a valentine's/tea party theme. I love Valentine's Day so I was really excited about this month!

We had lots of math fun all month with conversation hearts. Luckily, she never did suspect they were edible. We sorted them into groups then counted, found the largest/smallest groups, added/subtracted and even stacked (7 high was her record - mine was 6).

This picture is showing her favorite game of "How many more?" - I would put out something like 4 yellow and 1 green. She would count each then I would ask her how many more green she would need to get the same number as yellow. For some reason, she liked this a lot more than just adding or counting so we did it a lot. Then she started setting up scenarios to ask me.

We made a heart banner inspired by this post. I had preassembled the hearts but she picked the order and laced them onto a string of yarn.

I don't seem to have any pictures of the next activity - a heart hunt. Instead of numerals like the original idea, her hidden paper hearts had 12 letters I was confident she knew the sounds to. She would tell me the sound then find the matching letter in the egg carton.

Another pictureless part of our month was heart shaped pancakes. Ran into a bit of trouble when she didn't want me to cut them but then cried because she couldn't eat them without my cutting them (she is so very 2 sometimes) but once we got past that, it was very festive.

My favorite activity of the month was the watercolor doily banner we made. Craig was home that morning so Lucy and I were able to take our time and paint together (and yes, I'm in my pajamas and under her smock, Lucy is too, we take it easy when Craig is around)

I love this picture. She's concentrating so hard!

I think it turned out pretty cute!

Wait, I take that back. That last one wasn't my favorite activity. This next one was! I had seen this tutorial for using bleeding art tissue paper back in January but I couldn't find any in our local store so I ordered it from Amazon. It didn't arrive until February so I just changed the mitten idea to a heart.

 We also did it on a small canvas instead of paper. I was worried the canvas wouldn't accept the color as well but it looked great and the heart ended up being since we used red for the heart and different shades of blue and green so it will match our master bedroom. It isn't hung up yet but I know right where it's going!

We still needed some tea party fun though and I just happened to see this on pinterest! Vinegar + water + baking soda + dye = messy messy fun! I can see why the original poster did this outside but I'm also glad we didn't wait for summer. We talked about colors, what an experiment was, and took turns guessing what would happen (some cups had water so nothing happened, some had vinegar and y'all should know what happens then!). She loved to watch it overflow the cups (I started with a little bit too much vinegar :-) and the fizzy sounds it made.

After she added baking soda to the cups, we tried using a dropper to add vinegar to the baking soda and that was just as much fun. And with her helping, or should I say even with her helping, it didn't take long to get it all cleaned up.

The finale of our Valentine's day theme was a tea party. We made an invitation for Neighbor J and her two kids, put up our banners and then made treats. We started with the bright pink dip recipe from the cookbook Pretend Soup which Lucy got as a present. She loves that cookbook and gets it out every time I get out mine to meal plan. We made patterns with fruit on skewers to go with it.

Then we had a bit of a fail. We made heart shaped pretzels but I'm pretty sure I killed the yeast with overly hot milk. We've made the same recipe before and they were awesome but this time they just didn't raise despite extra time and ended up being heart shaped rocks. We quickly recovered by making bean brownies and using a doiley and some powdered sugar to make them extra special. And of course, tea. Neighbor J's kids actually like tea but Lucy went for water instead.

Next up was doctor/health. I didn't get much pre-planned for this since I was so busy planning Valentine's day but we made it work.

We sorted bandaids into different sizes and made patterns. She wasn't big into pattern making but she did enjoy making "families" with a large daddy band-aid, a medium mommy band-aid and a baby band-aid.

Lucy and Craig made a tracing of her body on brown paper and colored it. Then the next day we measured different parts of her body.

I didn't get any pictures but we did some band-aid painting by putting band-aids over a big piece of paper, painting it all then when it was dry we pulled off the band-aids. She learned the word "experiment" from the tea party activity above so I treated this like an experiment  What would it look like underneath the band-aids. Would it be paper colored or paint colored? She guessed paint and was excited to see she was wrong!

An incredible unfortunately coincidence brought another opportunity to talk about doctors. Neighbor J's little girl fell and broke her leg. So Lucy and I made her a special treat (Lucy's favorite snack, these energy balls) and delivered it along with a "get well soon" card. We talked about what happened to her and how doesn't feel good but the doctor's put a special hard bandage called a cast to help her heal. I also showed her some x-rays (I just searched Google Images) and even printed out and laminated a turtle x-ray for her to pretend with since her new favorite toy is this twilight turtle.

Between coloring a birthday card for me with Craig earlier this month and making that get well soon card for her friend, she is very interested in writing and card making. I love seeing her little cards all over the house. In case you can't read 2 year old, this says "otbLL" which according to her means "Get Well Soon Giraffe-y"

and this says "tolLE otittto" which means "Happy Birthday Elephant." The funny thing is she is very consistent. I put one of these in the recycling bin and she spotted it a couple days later and knew exactly what it "said" - and of course got upset because if it was thrown away Elephant would be very upset and wouldn't be able to celebrate his birthday. Shame on mommy!

The last activity we did was about germs. I slathered lotion on her hand then sprinkled cocoa to be germs and dirt. I had her try to wipe it off with a paper towel and some came off but not everything and if she touched something else, the germs spread. But after washing with soap and water, her hands were really clean! And we talked a bit more about germs and how they can make us sick even if we can't see them. We are having a bit of an issue with nose picking and it's driving me nuts so I tried to really push the idea that we get germs on our hands when we pick our noses so its better to use a tissue. I don't really think it's working. Do any of you have tips for dealing with nose picking?! 

So other than the nose picking, we had a good clean time this month.