PitterPatten: Valentine Tot School Co-Op!

Ok so I know this is a little over a week late but overall I don't feel like that's too bad! I am so blessed to know some beautiful ladies in my community whose tiny tots are very close in age to mine! We decided to put together a more glorified playgroup experience and call it a co-op! I was so excited about it I pretty much took on the entire initiative for this one but in the future we will be splitting up the responsibilities a little bit more.
The first thing I did was start an adorable Pinterest board to start gathering ideas.... You can check it out here. The kids ages are 12 months, 18 months, 19 months, and 20 months. I knew the rambunctious group wouldn't stay on one activity for very long and I knew they couldn't be too difficult so I tried to provide a variety of simple projects so each child could focus on the ones they liked the best.

First, we tried out some Do-a-Dot printables with magnetic pom-poms and cookie sheets! This was definitely a success. The tykes loved the texture of the pom-poms and were amazed at how they stuck to the cookie sheet. I got the Valentine colored pom-poms from the Target dollar spot and hot glued little strips of magnet to the bottom of them. We used printables from Gift of Curiosity. We also used our dot markers with some of the printables :)

I must say I'm pretty proud of myself for the next activity. While at my local Hobby Lobby store I came across these heart shaped cards meant for coloring. I decided to buy them and punch holes around the edge to make our own lacing cards! It was perfect! The kiddos are a little young to completely grasp the concept but they tried!

Next, we used some Gift of Curiosity play dough mats and some foam candy heart stickers I also found at Hobby Lobby. This was definitely the kids' favorite activity! They thought it was hilarious that the stickers kept getting stuck on their fingers.

Finally, I prepared this play dough from the Imagination Tree the night before co-op and it turned out great! It has a wonderful consistency, you can make it any color you want, and it is absolutely no big deal if the kids decide to eat it! I found some cute plastic heart shaped containers and filled them with multicolored pasta noodles. We stuck our Valentine-themed straws into the play dough and then stacked the pasta on them. Some of the kids were better at this than others but play dough is fun no matter what!