Love Letters

A few weeks ago we did an extra special art project with the children.  I like to call these love letters as we intended to mail them out to Moms and Dads for Valentines Day.  We did this project a number a years ago and it was so well received not only by the children but the parents getting the surprise!

The project is based on a book by Felicia Bond, The Day it Rained Hearts.  I so love this book and I especially love the way Cornelia Augusta finds all kinds of ways to make valentines to send to her friends.  Each one is different and unique to each of her friends.  It really is one of my favourites to read to the children.

For the Project we drew out hearts on Water color paper and had the children paint around them with Water color paint.  We used lots of paint to the colors would bleed into the paper and mix and over lap. As you can see they are beautiful.

 Next we stamped newsprint with ink using bingo dobbers and we had the children cut out their heart or pin push it out.  The news print hearts were glued into the water color paper and then they were packaged and mailed out to parents.

 We also built mailboxes for both classroom so that we could send and receive mail in our classrooms.  I went to Canadian Tire and bought these sweet mailboxes with flags on the side that pull up to indicate when there is to be delivered.  Each day a teacher will chose a child int he classroom to deliver the mail.    The bottom of the mail box (post ) is made from a sono tube that we squeezed together and screwed the mail box to.  We reused out wooden stand from our giving tree.  The sono tube cost about 10.00 for one 6ft piece and we cut it in half so we had one for each classroom.  We have since painted the bottom post part of the mail boxes.  The children love this new addition to the classroom and it has really promoted kindness through not and card making.