February Shelf Work.

We’re a week into February! I’m sharing some of our trays and activities in case they offer any inspiration for you and your little ones. We’ve clearly had Valentine’s Day on our minds. It’s a really fun time to spend with children!

Here’s what we’ve been up to —

Fine Motor:

I love including trays for fine motor skills. It’s so important to strengthen children’s muscles in their fingers, hands and wrists. This allows them to complete tasks independently. Here, I have a sprinkle tray (great for scooping and finger tracing), spooning, scooping, tonging, perler beads, pin-punching, and sharpening pencils.

Art and Sensory Play:

My kids LOVE sensory play and art. Some days, it’s all they do! I made each of them a kinetic sand box (filled with valentine’s day themed objects). They also have play dough kits, and love our light table. Then I have a tray for a gluing work, a stamping work with dot markers, and a heart paper punch work, a tray of perler beads, sponge painting, and ceramic painting.

Language:

It’s also fun to bring some themed activities into more academic work! I made a little matching game out of store bought valentines, put out some Sandpaper Letters for rubbing (/v/ for valentine!), made a Verb/Noun game by writing verbs and nouns on cut out hearts (to be sorted out), and word tracing (all Valentine’s Day words — like candy, love, chocolate!)

Math:

We use Montessori materials for most of our math work but these ideas are easy and fun (and basically free!) First, I have out number match/puzzles, then 1-9 counting (made with pony beads and pipe cleaners), a 100 Board extension (color a heart), and simple subtraction problems (written on heart doilies and paired with pony beads to help with counting.)

For Young Toddlers:

I posted details of most of these activities in this post. These are great themed activities for young toddlers (my daughter is 14 months olds) and they happen to all be DIYs.

February Fun:

Some other random things we’ve been doing: sweeping (scattering paper hearts on the floor and sweeping them up is a great Practical Life activity), making salt dough ornaments, fizzy experiments with baking soda heart ice cubes (add some vinegar and you’ll see the fizz), Valentine’s Day advent calendar, making sweets, playing tic tac toe (just washi tape and xoxo pretzels, and of course, making valentines!