House of Burke: Will You Be My Valentine?: Valentine Mailing Invitation to Play

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We are back again to show you even more love with our 4th installment of the Show Me the Love series with And Next Comes L and Still Playing School. Last week, I shared our Fine Motor Heart Stamping. During that activity, Kingston went on a painting frenzy and painted two extra Valentine's pictures. I used those paintings to create valentines and coordinating stamps!

To make the valentines, I simply freehanded some heart and rectangle shapes. For the stamps, I cut out some small squares. Then I laminated everything in the phenomenal Scotch Thermal Laminator that I got for Christmas. Seriously, if you do not have one of these and you are a homeschooling parent, a parent who likes to do fun activities with your children, or someone looking for a way to archive their children's artwork, you NEED one of these. They are so inexpensive and just plain magical. Seriously, BUY ONE! You can thank me later. (End rant!) After everything was laminated, I cut it all out. For the stamps I stuck on heart stickers. I tried multiple different ways to get the stamps to stick to the valentines. My first thought was that I wanted to attach it with Velcro, however after multiple attempts with different glues, I gave up and used tape instead. Kingston loves sticking and un-sticking tape, and with the vinyl it worked perfectly.

Since our Counting and Sorting Hearts activity went so well on Kingston's little table, I decided to set up this invitation to play here as well. I laid out the valentines and put the little mailbox that I gave to Kingston last year for his 1st Valentine's Day right next to them.

He was immediately drawn to the mailbox and spent so much concentrated time exploring it. He wanted to take the door on and off which was great for his spatial reasoning and fine motor skills. He also loved putting the little flag up and down.

I was in love with the determination on his little face. He was so serious about the task at hand!

Then I explained to him the whole concept of mailing valentines. I showed him how to put them in his mailbox and we talked about who the valentines were addressed to: Glam*Ma, Grumpy, Aunta, Mama, Dada, and Livvy (Kingston's girlfriend!) Then I told him about stamps and showed him how to take them off and put them on. As I predicted, he was so excited about this!

He loved taking the stamps on and off.

Once he was satisfied with the stamp placement, he put them in his little mailbox. This was again another great way to practice spatial reasoning and fine motor skills.

Of course once the valentines were in the mailbox, they HAD to be pulled and shaken out!

He spent quite a bit of time perfecting and mailing his valentines. I was very satisfied with how much he enjoyed it! When he was done, he "secretly" dropped all his valentines on the ground, and when I went to pick them up he said "nooooo noo", got up off of his chair, smiled, and walked away. I love toddler communication skills!