Valentine's day countdown & bonus printable

My kids love countdowns and holidays.  This year we are doing 14 days of Valentine's fun!  Each day they can pick a number and we will do the activity on the back.  There are a couple that do need to be done on a certain day like our Valentine's dinner and party.  I've shared the list of activities we are going to be doing, how to make your own frame, and a printable to make your own.     

Also I had a little room on the last page so I made a bonus printable as well (fits a 4x6 frame).  

First up our list of activities- you can write them on the back of your cards or keep a master list that corresponds with the numbers.  That's what I like to do in case I need to switch up an activity one day. 

1. family movie night

2. Read Valentine books

3.  Make cards for class and family

4. Decorate sugar cookies

5. Friend Party

6. Special family dinner

7. Heart Craft 

8. Love potion science experiment

9. bingo or game

10. Heart attack Dad's office

11. make a love bug

12. make Valentine oreos

13. make Valentine brownies

14. Salt dough heart necklaces

For the frame I used an old 16x20 that didn't have glass.  It was previously painted black and needed some love.  

I painted the frame white and sanded it down with my electric sander.

I attached some rope with hot glue to the back.  I did 4 rows evenly spaced.

Print out the 3 printables below (I used plain printer paper).  Cut and attach to rope with clothes pins.  If you want to go across instead of down you will want to use small clothes pins.  The large ones are too heavy and will flop forward.   To print the pages below: click on the image and save to your computer or you can copy and paste into a word document and size to your liking. Then print.

What activities are you going to add?

 Did you see the bonus printable?  Its on the 3rd page.  

 I love it on my shelf/fake mantle.

Martin Luther King Jr. Learning day

One of my goals this year is to be more present in my children's life.  I want a big part of that to be teaching them about the world around us, history, science, life skills, and whatever they show an interest in.   Today we learned about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.  It was really amazing to see how much my girls loved the activities and how quickly they understood the concept I was trying to teach them.

We started with 2 bags.  I asked them which one they would choose. (idea came from here) My 10 and 7 year old choose the pink one and my 2 year old picked the brown one.

 We dumped them out and both had a bag of popcorn inside.

 It was a great way to introduce them to the idea that we all look different on the outside but we are all the same on the inside.  We did talk about the color of our skin but included some people are tall, some wear glasses, some have brown hair, or blue eyes.  It was really awesome to hear their thoughts.


Next we read this cute story and made the craft that went with it.  (you can find it here for free)

We finished up by watching this cute youtube video.  Have you watched any of the kid president videos?  I love him and this one is perfect!

We filled in our "I have a dream" printable together that I posted earlier today.  You can find it here.

 (everyone will treat people the way we want to be treated)

My 2 year old kept saying "to watch Mickey" so we added that as well.

It was a lot of fun and I look forward to sharing more of our learning adventures this year.

I have a Dream Printable

Today I am going to talk to my kids about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his dream for a better world.  

We are going to use this printable I created to write some of our dreams and hopes.  You are welcome print and use it.

Download your copy here

I'll be posting our other activities and our finished "dream" page later today. (update you can find our activities here)