Valentine Bags and Heart Links

I wanted to quickly show you the bags we made to hold our valentines. We started it last week during our dental health unit. I traced hearts onto white paper and put out red, pink and purple paint. The kids dipped toothbrushes into the paint and flicked the bristles to make the paint splatter onto their heart.

This didn't work as well as I thought it would. I tried adding water, but that just made it drip big globs of paint. Maybe our brushes were too old or something. We had one brush that worked great, but the others were very hard to work with. But the kids enjoyed it, so that's all that matters. When they were dry I cut them out and wrote their names on them. Then I taped them onto bags that I bought at Party City.

And then, to decorate it even more, we used some foam stickers that I got from CraftProjectIdeas.com.

 The kids loved the glitter ones.

 We pretended those purses were padlocks, keeping our valentines safe!

Here is the valentine I made for my kids:

I wanted it to be something they could read themselves, so I used a wiggle eye, a heart gem and used glitter glue to make the U. I attached it to a kaleidoscope that I found at Party City.
Another thing I wanted to share with you are these heart links I found at Target. They were in the valentine section, not the dollar spot. They were $3 and had 60 in a pack. We've been using them all week, to make patterns,

practice counting (using a die to tell us how many links to add to the chain),

sort them by color using what I like to call "robotic claws,"

and play tic-tac-toe. My kids are really into this game lately.

We haven't had any break yet, so I'm pretty happy with them. And they really are pretty, too!
Happy Valentine's Day!

Sweet Tooth (and a Frog Treat)

To finish up our dental health week, I made "toothpaste" by mixing tempera paint with shaving cream.

It was nice and fluffy! The kids used toothbrushes to brush giant teeth that I had cut out.

I did not add any glue, so this isn't puffy paint. For the most part, it dried flat. But they looked so pretty with the Valentine's colors they used, I decided to call them Sweet Teeth.

And on an unrelated note, one of my kids brought in a birthday treat. FROGS!

It's an Oreo cookie sitting on two pretzels, all covered in what I think was white chocolate tinted green. It had candy eyes and a strawberry fruit snack for a tongue. How cute is that?

And it was so good!

Say Cheese!

Our theme this week is dental health. A couple years ago I had the kids paint a big mouth and glue mini marshmallows on for teeth. This year I decided it would be cute if the kids painted a self-portrait with an extra big head and smile, and then glue on the marshmallows. They used watercolors to paint their picture. I reminded them that they needed to have a big, open mouth in order to fit the marshmallows.

Then they dipped the mini marshmallows in glue and put them in their mouths -- on their portrait, that is!

And I was right! These turned out so cute!

HA! I hung them up with the caption, "Show me your pearly whites!"

They make me smile every time I see them. Especially that first one I shared with you.

Love it!

Floss-Painted Hearts

We are doing a dental theme this week, so yesterday the kids painted with floss! We did this activity last year, but this year I decided to turn it into a Valentine's Day craft to help decorate our room. So I put out 6 different colors of paint and added a piece of floss to each of them.

The paintbrushes were used to push the floss down into the paint, otherwise it would just sit on top. And we made sure to leave part of the floss out of the paint so we'd have something clean to hang on to. The kids just dragged the floss across their paper, which had a heart on it.

It made very skinny lines, but I thought it looked cool!

Then I cut them out and hung them on our door.

I was thinking of adding words to them, like conversation hearts, but I thought I'd screw up and mess up their beautiful art. So I left them alone.

Dental Floss Painting

Here's a quick art project you can do if you are doing a dental theme, or if you are just looking for something different to paint with. Put some dental floss in paint and drag it across your paper!

The spoons are needed to push the floss into the paint because it's so light, it will just sit on top. We used red and pink because we were in a valetiney mood.

This is very similar to when we painted with noodles. And the results are just as cool.

Healthy Teeth Activity

Continuing with our healthy teeth theme, today we sorted pictures of food into healthy and unhealthy piles. I found this idea at From the Hive. I had asked the kids to bring in pictures of their favorite foods for this activity. I also brought in a bunch from the newspaper for those kids who forgot.

I cut big teeth from paper and drew on either a smiley face or a sad face. I also left some blank in case the kids wanted to make their own faces.

Then they started gluing the pictures on the appropriate tooth.

The kids really seemed to enjoy this activity and stuck with it for a long time!

Marshmallow Mouths

This week we are learning about the importance of healthy teeth. I brought in some mini marshmallows, which immediately peaked the interest of all the kids. First they painted an open mouth on their paper. Basically, a big pair of lips.

Then they glued on the marshmallows to look like teeth.

I must admit, a few of them were a little scary!

But it was a fun activity. Another exciting thing we did was paint with toothbrushes!

The kids had a wonderful time!