ECC Valentine's Day Activities

Happy Valentine's Day everyone! It's that time of year to stock up on CVI supplies since so many stores are carrying shiny red everything. Hit up our favorite CVI supply hot spots like Dollar Tree and Michael's for sweet deals. I was just at Michael's and they have all Valentine's day decorations for 40% off. 

I teamed up again with our awesome preschool teacher, Annie, to develop some Valentine's Day that teach Expanded Core skills and are fun to do. At our school (Utah School for the Blind), we are big on using curriculum that is specific for children with vision impairments. One of our favorite curriculums is the Texas School for the Blind Elementary Concepts Curriculum (if you don't know much about this, come right back to my blog because I am blogging about it NEXT!).  We used some units from TSBVI ECC with some fun ideas we found on Pinterest to create some awesome Expanded Core Valentine's Day activities. 

Check them out:

Activity #1: Love Potion

Source: http://preschoolpowolpackets.blogspot.com/2014/01/love-potions-valentine-science.html?m=1

Materials: kool aid, clear cups, Sprite, water, red food coloring

Activity: Students can choose to make their love potion using water and kool aid or with Sprite and food coloring. Students can compare and contrast flavors and taste.

Expanded Core Main Areas: ILS, SD, SS, SE

Activity #2 Conversation Hearts

From TSBVI ECC Friend Unit (page 24)

Materials: candy conversation hearts, cutout hearts

Activity: teacher writes/Braille conversation starters and finisher on hearts. Each student takes a turn selecting a heart and identifies if it is a conversation starter or finisher. Teachers can put print words in a smaller print to create a magnifier use activity. Students may use a magnifier to read the print. Students can eat conversation hearts on their turn.  Follow objectives a, b and d from Others Unit B: Friends, page 24 in TSBVI ECC

Expanded Core Main Areas: SS, Comp, SD, CE, C

Write conversation phrases on hearts. Use an optical device to practice reading or locating text.

Add a Braille label for students who are learning Braille. 

Activity #3 Friendship Cookie

From TSBVI ECC Friend Unit page 30

Materials: cookie dough, cookie cutter

Activity: From TSBVI ECC, follow activity #3. Activity #5 for an additional cooking activity. Students each make their own cookie and then they merge them together to make one big cookie. If possible, let the kids put them in/take out the oven.

Expanded Core Main Areas: ILS, SS, SD, SE

Activity #4 Heart Hunt

Materials: cutout hearts in a variety of colors and textures

Activity: Send students on a heart hunt. Give them a selected color or texture to find around the wheelchair tray, classroom or the hallway.

Expanded Core Main Areas: OM, SE, SD, C

Activity #5 Heart Attack

Materials: cutout hearts in different colors/textures, directions cards

Activity: Students can select a classroom door to “heart attack”. Teachers prepare 4 different direction cards with up or top, down or bottom, left and right printed on them in print and Braille. Teachers can draw an arrow (and add texture for blind students) to indicate directions. Students select a direction card and put the heart on the door that correlates to the direction. For example, student selects “bottom” card and places the heart on the bottom of the door.

Expanded Core Main Areas: OM, C, SS, RL, SE

direction cards. Annie put the card on the door and her student had to place their valentine heart in the correct direction. 

Some heart cutouts used puff paint for texture. Other hearts were made with textured paper from the Carousel of Textures from APH.