I made this cute worksheet to include in my kid’s Valentine’s Day activities.
It’s great since my girls are learning their letters, but it’s still fun, even for older kids that are just beginning to read on their own.
It’s also a great worksheet to use if you’re following along with our Alphabet Activities.
It’s free for home and classroom use, but please don’t sell or reproduce it.
You can print the PDF by clicking the link below:
These are the Valentine’s Day treats that my kids will be giving to their class this month.
I chose bubbles because I really wanted to avoid adding even more sugar to the student’s pile of what was sure to be a large load of candy.
And bubble are always a hit with kids.
So I looked around and found these adorable mini bubbles at Target in the holiday section of the store. I then found the Valentine’s colored bakers twine in the bargain section near the front of Target.
Of course, you can also sometimes find colorful bakers twine in the baking section of stores, and I’ve sometimes found fun colors of bakers twine in the craft section of my local Dollar Tree.
And if you’re having trouble finding mini bubbles, I’ve found that Party City usually has a large supply of colorful bubbles as party favors.
Anyway: back to the tags!
I made these heart-shaped tags in red and pink, after playing around with other color combinations like red and blue or red and purple. I found I liked the way these looked best.
And they probably would have looked even better for my photos if my printer hadn’t started running out of ink…..
I made two versions. The first has both a “to” and “from” on it, and the second {seen in the photos} only has “from.”
I did this because my girls are in preschool and it just seemed easier on everyone if we only wrote their names on the Valentines instead of the names of all of their classmates, too. But older kids might want to write who they’re for, so I made that an option.
To assemble the Valentines, I first wrote my girls’ names on the heart and cut them out. Then I punched a hole in the heart with a hole punch on the left side of the top of the heart.
Next, I cut a piece of bakers twine about 10 inches long and tied it around the neck of the bubble bottle. I double knotted it so it wouldn’t go anywhere. Then I strung the heart onto one piece of the tied bakers twine and tied another double knot to secure the heart to the bubbles.
You could stop there, I guess, but I went ahead and tied a bow to make them look a little nicer. I double knotted the bow as well, so it wouldn’t come undone.
I then packed all the bubbles into a heart-shaped basket we already had to make it easy for my girls to bring them to school
To open the free printable PDFs, click on the link below for the one you want:
Happy Crafting! And please share your photos with me here or on Facebook if you make these!!
This is really one of those posts that should have been finished waaaaaaaay before Christmas, but, well … it wasn’t. Things are, you know: busy.
I’m sure you know.
And there will totally still be some Christmas-themed posts appearing after Christmas, too………
Anyway, when I was shopping around for a gift for my daughter’s teachers, I was having a hard time deciding what to do.
I thought a Christmas themed mug filled with coffee would be nice… but what if they didn’t drink coffee?
I kept the mug idea, but added some tea and hot cocoa to the coffee. And candy, of course.
But what about a gift tag?
There are a ton online, but none said exactly what I wanted.
So I made my own.
Here you can see that I got these adorable snowman mugs {at Target} and filled them with Starbucks VIA Christmas Coffee packs, a couple flavors of individually wrapped tea bags, and some hot cocoa mix {with mini marshmallows}.
I also stuck in a couple of candy canes and 3 or 4 Lindt chocolate balls.
Then I put the whole thing into a “cookie bag” and tied it off with some curled ribbon, tying the tag onto one of the ribbon strands.
It looked pretty cute, and I’m kinda kickin’ myself for forgetting to photograph the finished gift.
Anyway, if you need a tag that mentions “latte” {for coffee} and “tea,” then these are for you!
Oh, and I purposely didn’t add an outline shape to the tags on the PDF printable. That way you can cut them out in the same shape I did, or as squares or circles or whatever compliments your gift.
Enjoy!
So, I have been SUPER busy lately….. and totally neglecting this blog. I’ve got over a dozen half-finished posts, but I just can’t seem to find the time to sit down and edit photos and finish the posts.
And I wish I could say it’s because NaNoWriMo has taken over my life and I’ve just completed the next great American novel………
But, alas, that isn’t the reason. It is book related, though. And also pretty awesome.
I’ve been spending a lot of my time absorbed in the world of Usborne.
Usborne Books & More is an amazing company that has been the leading publishers of children’s nonfiction for the last two years. They make reading and learning FUN, the books are incredible, AND….. here’s the awesomest part: you can sign up to be a consultant and make a living giving away free books and spreading literacy and the love of reading!
Really. Not just a sales pitch. This is really, truly, the best thing I have seen in a long time. It’s like throwing Tubberware or Pampered Chef parties – but with BOOKS. {my favorite thing in the world}
I’m really excited about it, and I’ll certainly be posting more about the books in the future. And about other books, too: I looked back over my blog and realized that I hadn’t posted many book reviews recently, and, because of a series of nasty, goopy, throat-clogging viruses, I’d also stopped making videos for Roaming Rosie Reads.
I plan to change that. Spreading a love of reading is very important to me. People tell me things like, “well, your kids love books….” but really, ALL kids love books – if they have the right books. Everyone loves reading, if they’re reading the right books.
I want to help people find books they’ll love.
And, you know, I also joined with Usborne to get tons of free and super-discounted books for my family. Can’t beat that. :)
{You can see a pic of my kids attacking the new box of books on Instagram.}
I wanted to add a little something to this rambling, though, so I’m also including the printable sign I used to serve up some gummy worms at my last book party:
The banners are in two sizes because when I made it, I wasn’t sure what size bowl I was going to be using.
I just cut out the banner and used tape to attach it to the bowl.
Using gummy worms as “bookworms” is a totally cute idea for book parties, back to school parties, book club meetings, and more, so I wanted to share it to make it easy for people to have fun with the idea!
Make sure to check out my new book website: BooksWithRosie or follow me on Facebook at RoamingRosieRemix {for blog stuff} and UsborneBooksWithRosie {for book stuff}!
Enjoy the sign!
This Halloween Puffy Paint Window Cling project was one of those that was a borderline “Fail” for me.
Luckily the kids still had a blast.
Not only did I let them play with paint {always a big hit} but they also got to stick things on the windows {also cool}.
The main problem was that I made some of them too thin, meaning that they got stuck to the wax paper. The ones that came off still had some paper residue on one side and had to be attached to the window with the side I thought would be facing us.
Since I had so much trouble peeling some of those off of the not-as-smooth side of the waxed paper, I then tried drawing some on the shiny side. Some of those were also too thin, but then they all stuck, regardless.
And by then I’d run out of puffy paint.
I plan to redo the project again in the future to try to figure out a better method, but, in the meantime, since my kids were so delighted with the whole thing, I’m sharing the free printables that I made for it anyway.
The point was to draw with the puffy paint on the waxes paper while the template was underneath {I was actually very proud of how well my 4yo did}, then let the paint dry, peel off your design, and stick it on a window.
As I mentioned, it kinda worked.
If you have {or have had} better success with a similar craft, please let me know!!
Here are the free printable PDFs that are in the photo above:
And it wasn’t all bad. The ones I salvaged did look pretty neat on the window. :)
We have a lot of Biscuit books.
And a lot of Clifford books.
So when I found this Free Printable Clifford Maze, I instantly thought of Biscuit Visits the Pumpkin Patch. It seemed like a wonderful match.
My kids both love the Biscuit book, and we tend to read it more often in the fall.
It’s a short – and very simple – story, but entertaining. I read it slowly and always take the time to ask who is hiding when we get to the page where there are bunny ears sticking out from behind one of the pumpkins.
And because my girls also love Clifford, they were excited when I printed out the maze for them. So I wanted to share it.
Enjoy! :)
My girls love activities like this.
And I love sneaking a little learning {like fine motor control} into things they enjoy.
So I made some Halloween worksheets featuring activities that my 4yo especially enjoys. And though my 2yo is more inclined to color the ghosts than trace the dots, she still enjoys being involved in whatever her big sister is doing. :)
Click here for the FREE printable PDF worksheets:
Also, a fun dinner to follow up your Little One finding the path of a worm through a jack o’ lantern would be my Spicy Spaghetti Worms in Pepper Jack O’ Lanterns:
Happy Halloween!
If you’re new here, please read the Introduction to the Alphabet Activities first!
Here are all of the printable PDFs for the Letter E. They are free for home and classroom use, but please don’t sell or reproduce them.
And don’t forget to check out all of our Letter E Alphabet Activities!
Follow me on Facebook and Pinterest to see my latest posts.
Have fun!
I like to make homemade activities for my girls by recycling things we have around the house.
We use pipe cleaners {or chenille sticks} fairly often, so we’ve always got those on hand. I usually get them at the dollar store.
For this project, I used 4 pipe cleaners and cut them into inch-long pieces with a pair of strong scissors.
Then, the goal was simply to put them into an old spice container.
This is the type of spice container that holds dried herbs, like parsley or oregano. You’ll notice the top has only 6 large holes.
It’s a great way to work on fine motor skills and helps with prewriting skills.
The only drawback to this is that the metal inside the pipe cleaners can be a little sharp. There are a couple of ways around this. One: ignore it. And two: use pliers to curve over the very ends of the metal pieces, making sure that the sticks still fit through the holes in the spice container.
We chose option one.
Really, it’s not terribly sharp and you can insert them without pushing the ends anyway if you manipulate the pieces by holding them on the fuzzy part. Or pushing gently, which is what I showed my girls.
Or, if you’re really worried about it, you could just use pieces of yarn instead.
My favorite part is that all the little pieces fit inside the container, and, thus, it is self-contained and easy to store.
For more kid activities using items around the house, check out:
Have fun!
If you’re new here, please read the Introduction to the Alphabet Activities first!
Here are all of the printable PDFs for the Letter D. They are free for home and classroom use, but please don’t sell or reproduce them.
And don’t forget to check out all of our Letter D Alphabet Activities.
Follow me on Facebook and Pinterest to see my latest posts.
Have fun!
Roaming Rosie 