MINI MONDAY

I Love You Berry Much!

What’s not to love? Celebrate all the love within your household by coming together to create this bright and beautiful art piece that showcases your whole family!

Materials

• Red construction paper
• Green construction paper
• White paper
• White paint
• Scissors (child friendly)
• Glue
• Baby wipes/paper towel

Directions:

• Fold a piece of white paper in two. Trace the half of two hearts – one large and one small – along the crease of the paper. The large heart will be used to create your strawberry, while the small heart will be used to create the leaves
• Depending on the age of your child, allow them to use the scissors to cut along the lines to create your heart tracers, or use the scissors yourself
• Unfold your tracers. Place the large one on a piece of red construction paper, and the small one on a piece of green construction paper. Allow your child to trace the white paper or guide their hand to trace your hearts together. You will want to trace one of the large hearts, and three of the small hearts
• Allow your child to use the scissors to cut out the hearts or cut them out yourself. Cut out one small, slightly curved piece of green construction paper for the stem
• Arrange the small green hearts on the large red heart so that they create leaves. Allow your child to apply glue to the back of the green hearts to attach them to the red heart, or guide them in doing so, depending upon their age. Use glue to apply the stem to the back of the heart
• Pour the white paint onto a plate. Together with your child and other members of your family, dip each of your fingers into the paint, and press them onto the red heart one by one to create the seeds of the strawberry. As you do, count with your child to reinforce how many fingerprints each member of your family is placing on the strawberry
• When you are all done finger-painting, wash your hands or clean them with baby wipes
• Once your strawberry is all dry, hang it somewhere for everyone to enjoy!

Keep the fun and learning going! Can you…

• Match your fingers to each of the seeds on the strawberry?
• Find the biggest seed in the strawberry? The smallest seed?
• Count how many seeds are in the strawberry?

Essential Learning Experiences

Developing Self-Awareness

Developing self-awareness is an important part of early social-emotional development which helps contribute to children’s ability to make friends and interact with others successfully. Self-awareness starts with a child recognizing representations of themselves, and moves into how they perceive themselves, allowing them to make choices based on their interests.

This craft helps develop self-awareness through connecting the fact that the seeds in the strawberry are representations of the child’s fingerprints. By including the entire family in the craft, it encourages the child to feel connected to others, and helps to promote a sense of belonging!

Recognizing Attributes and Characteristics

Did you know that sorting and classifying are important parts of early math development? By practicing recognizing the attributes and characteristics of objects, children will be able to use this information to later help them sort these objects into groups!

This craft helps children practice recognizing the attributes and characteristics of different objects by identifying and contrasting the varying sizes of seeds in the strawberry.

Stay tuned for more resources to help spark kids’ creative learning!