It’s been a festive couple of days here at Harbor City School!  As we welcome two new Tugboats to the crew yesterday, we also wrapped up our preparations for our Valentine’s Day celebration.  Everyone got a mailbox, beautifully hand-made by Grady and Erin, and decorated it with white, pink, and red heart stickers.  With their patterns pasted on the front of the mailboxes, we stored them in their cubbies, ready to be filled with Valentines!  We also made stained-glass hearts, designed by Kristy, using clear contact paper and tissue paper.  Once they were completed, they looked lovely in the windows with the afternoon sunlight streaming through.  Coupled with the heart mosaics we made last week, our classroom was decorated and ready for a party…

And party we did!  We held our Valentine’s brunch this morning, complete with heart-shaped pancakes, pink muffins, and a delicious array of vegetables, fruit, and yogurt.  After enjoying a morning snack, the children took turns decorating a heart-shaped cookie with low-sugar frosting and colored sprinkles to be enjoyed at afternoon snack.  They also had an opportunity to make Valentines in addition to the cards they had already delivered to their friends’ mailboxes.  Some children read stories on the couch with a grown-up while others raced cars and trucks around the track on the floor.  With many parents and siblings joining us, it was quite a crowd, but certainly a fun one!  The party took a scholastic turn as we headed into Circle Time (the biggest we’ve had yet!), where we read The Night Before Valentine’s Day, sang our counting Valentines song, and recited our Love Is a Circle Poem.  We also enjoyed a puzzle game in which each child had half of a heart and had to find their friend holding the other half of their heart.  By the end of the party, all of our hearts were full!

Once the party was over and our extra friends and grown-ups returned home, we tried to resume our day as usual.  We took a trip to the playground for some swinging, climbing, and running.  Our parent teacher today, Erin, had prepared an activity addressing the recent interest in mail and the Post Office.  First, Erin read Seven Little Postmen, by Margaret Wise Brown, about how a secret message travels through the mail.  Each child had a small piece of paper on which to write their message and a larger piece of paper to be folded into an envelope.  Once the envelopes were sealed with a sticker, the children attached “stamps” and wrote the to and from addresses.  The completed packages were deposited in our class mailbox, which was also made by Erin and Grady!  I think there may be a neighborhood field trip in our future…