February...So Many Holidays, So Little Time

This is a fun month filled with all kinds of activities and holidays. We just love holidays!! Tomorrow is Groundhog Day. We will be talking about some funny traditions for Groundhog Day. I am pretty sure most of us can look outside and see that winter is not over. The Chinese New Year is on Thursday. We will be watching a library DVD on how families live in China. We will also have Chinese food and make lanterns that I found on clearance. I am going to put their breakfasts into the fun Chinese boxes below.

Then comes Valentine's Day. We will be reading lots of Valentine's Day books from the library and learning more about the significance of the day. I am looking around for lots of fun crafts to do that day.  We already decorated the front door with hearts.  I also plan on serving lots of red, white, and pink food for lunch.

I thought I would try a Montessori-inspired sensory box this month. Through the whole month of February we will be doing some fun activities with our sensory box. The kids will find spelling tiles in the box and put our special spelling word in order. This week's special word is February. Also, we will play I Spy, Operation (picking out certain things with tweezers or spoon), and do some graphing charts with the contents of the box. 

Toward the end of the month we will be joining the Festival of Knowledge (a statewide competition held in our area every year for school-aged kids). This is an opportunity for the kids to make a project revolving around the Cherokee Indians and do some public speaking. I was going to drop this activity, but then the kids were looking at what we had done and I realized we were halfway there. So we are going to take one day and finish as much as we can, and I will drop my perfectionist ways and be happy with the results. LOL!

For history this month, we are doing a different pivotal person during Colonial times each week. We did Ben Franklin for the last week of January. This week we are doing Paul Revere. Then we will do Thomas Jefferson for week two and George Washington for week three. I think we will then do a week on the Revolutionary War before moving to John Adams, Betsy Ross, Daniel Boone, Benjamin Banneker and a few others. I think only Betsy Ross will get a week to herself from the remaining pivotal characters.

Then February 21 is President's Day! We will be doing our traditional trivia scavenger hunt with my husband's childhood bronze presidents. The kids just loved this activity last year and got excited when they saw it on the calendar.  

(George Washington's hiding place last year -- his teeth were very important to him)

In addition to all of the above, we have two classes at the art and science museums which are always tons of fun. I am also trying to nail down a field trip to our local organic grocery store. FUN, FUN, FUN!!!

Blessings,
Dawn