Valentines Day

So today was the last day of school before break so I decided to do Valentine's Day activities with my kids. We read a book in the morning about it and talked about all the people we love since Valentine's Day isn't celebrated as much here as it is in the United States. After the kids had gym and they got to fly kites which I think they all enjoyed, though I had some upset kids when their kites broke or got stuck in a tree, but they seemed to get over it pretty fast, especially because today was another "fun" day. After PE we did some crafts. One table made cards while the other made a picture. The cards were made by using heart stamps that I made from toilet paper role tubes and simple dipping them in red paint and stamping them on the paper. It was so easy for my to put together since all I needed to do was squish a few tp rolls. The other table that was making pictures had lots of hearts cut out of tissue paper (this took me quite some time to do...) and they had glue paint (1/3 glue, 2/3 water and a little bit of food coloring.) They used the glue paint to stick their tissue paper hearts on and make awesome collages. After each table was finished we switched. We managed to get lots of art done in 45 minutes today and they all looked awesome. Here are some pictures:

Martina making her card.

Marian, Marcel and Martina very focused.

Michelle's finished card.

Luis' heart collage. 

Kenvi and Marcel doing their collages. 

Luis making his card.

Our finished projects. 

I forgot to mention that lots of my kids dressed up today because it is carnival here. It's the reason we had a party last night and why we don't have school next week. If my kids here get dressed up I'm pretty excited to see what the parties on Margarita island will be like next week. 

So, back to school information, after crafts we made "love potions." I just used the simple baking soda/vinegar experiment but added a nice little valentine's day twist. They kids each got a cup with their name with baking soda and a popsicle stick in it to stir. They were then allowed to put things like glitter, bubbles and liquid watercolors in and mix it all together so it was actually like they were making a potion. They had a ton of fun with this and I ended up covered in glitter. After they finished mixing I took out a container that had vinegar. I told them all this was my "special, magical water" and gave them each a small cup of it. When I said go everyone poured the "water" into their potion and watched it grow and overflow their cups. They had a great time making the potions then making a mess in it afterwards. I had no problem letting them play in this mess since there was nothing that would stain their clothes or ruin anything, it was really just soapy, sparkly, vinegar more than anything. Even though we made quite a mess the clean up was pretty easy and they were good about helping, even though they didn't want to stop playing. Check out how fun this was:

Mixing the first part of the potion.

Marcel showing off his. Not sure why Luis looks so confused.

Everybody was really focused and intrigued by this activity.

Purple sparkly potions. (The picture doesn't capture all the glitter that was in these.)

Look at that concentration.

We put all the cups on this green try because I was trying to avoid it getting on the table too much.

Clearly that did not happen. The table got pretty messy.

Our fun exploding/growing potions. 

Yup, making a mess.

A huge mess, but tons of fun.

Watching our potions grow/explode!!

*Please be aware that there a lot of loud screams in this video.

Overall, MUCH better day then yesterday. Our listening skills were better and we got to do lots of fun things just the way I planned. I've got to try and think of more fun science experiments to do with them. Even though they're messy (which is part of the fun), the kids really really love them. That's about it for now. Going to go start enjoying my week off and getting everything ready to go on vacation on Monday!!!