Morning Work Activities for February

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It’s that time of the month . . . time introduce you to my Morning Work Activities for February, and I just know you’re going to LOVE them!!!!!

You’ll find a brief listing and a picture of each activity below.  There are 36 activities, so I’m going to make it kind of quick.  But, remember, if you would like to know where I secured various items that I use with these activities, just click on THIS LINK to see a breakdown of all the materials I use in each activity.

This post does contain some affiliate links for your shopping convenience.  I do receive a small commission when someone purchases an item after clicking on a link.  These commissions help with the cost of maintaining this blog and allow me to continue bringing you valuable content, activities, and ideas.

1.Box of Chocolate Sight Word Links

This EDITABLE activity allows you to enter the sight words you wish instead of being stuck with the ones I use.  Students then use plastic links to spell out the words on the candy heart box card.  GREAT fine motor practice.

2.Sweet Sounds CVC Self-Correcting Fun

This self-correcting activity allows students to immediately get feedback. . .

Students look at the card and spell the word out with heart cards and plastic clips.  They then write the word with dry erase marker . . .

. . . open the card and they can see whether they are correct or not.  These self-correcting cards make activities so independent.  I LOVE that.

3.Lovely Links Numbers and Quantities

Again with the links?  Yes!  If you are like me, you have a tub of plastic links in your cupboard and you don’t really know how to best utilize them.  Well, here’s your answer.  I place playing cards in a sensory tub filled with Valentine themed items and students search for the cards.  When they find a number card, they hang it up using some cute thematic clothespins.  Then they match up all the quantities, ten frames and tally mark cards below the numeral. Numbers come in 0-20 so you differentiate this activity as needed.

4.Sprinkles and Sweets Sand Tray Sight Words Trays

I love using a sand tray as another way to practice writing each month.  If at all possible I try to make it thematic and fun, so when I saw this idea from Pocketful of Preschool for adding Valentine’s sprinkles to my sand trays, I knew it would be perfect.  I added editable ‘cupids arrow’ sight word cards and printed them off on different colored card stock so I could easily differentiate them.  I use themed pencils from the Dollar Tree or plastic heart straws from Walmart as my writing utensil for these trays.

5.Sweet Play-doh Counting Math Mats

Nothing is better for fine motor practice than play-doh, and what kid doesn’t love it?    In this first set, students who are still working on number recognition and numeracy simply count the number of chocolate candies, write the number using play-doh, then make the same number of candies for the candy heart box.

6.Sweet Play-doh Ten Frame

To extend learning, in this activity students make the number and then represent it as a 10 frame number.

7.Sweet Play-doh How Many More To Make Ten

And finally, in this play-doh activity, students make the number, represent it in a ten frame and tell me how many more they need to make ten.  Everyone gets to use Play-doh at their own level of readiness.  That’s a win-win!

8.Play-doh Cupcake Decorating and Box of Sweets

Combining fine motor with creativity is especially engaging for your students with Artistic Multiple Intelligences.  Here they can decorate a Valentine cupcake or the other mat allows them to fill a candy heart box full of ‘candy goodies’ of their creation.

9.Play-doh Valentine’s Day Items

Or you can offer these thematic vocabulary play-doh cards for students to use.  As long as it’s play-doh, they’ll love it.

10.Valentine’s Q-tip Painting

Always one of my most popular stations, in this activity, students use q-tips and paint to trace the picture.  There are four different thematic pictures from which to choose.

If your students are also huge q-tip painting lovers like mine, you may also be interested in checking out my latest editable Dot-It, Paint-It, Stick It.  It gives you a chance to offer your students more opportunities to paint and stick as they practice their sight words and letters. Just click HERE to see all about them.

11.Sweet Sort (Therapy Putty)

Therapy putty is a must.  This month I am hiding these colored heart buttons I found at Target last year in putty, but really, you can use heart shaped pony beads or regular colored buttons as well.   If you interested in using the heart shaped pony beads, there is a link here to where you can find some on Amazon.  They include white, red, purple and pink colors that can be used with this activity for simple sorting.

12.Sweet Hearts Graphing (Therapy Putty)

To extend this activity, I also offer a graphing option.  I have three tubs of therapy going this month, so students graph each tub for this activity.

13.Sweet Sort, Find, Sort, Graph and Count (Therapy Putty)

Or you can offer them this graph and count option.  Students graph what they find, record the quantity of each color and then the total.

14.Race To Collect Your Valentines

I hope you’ve stocked up on pink and red table scatter from the Dollar Tree because I use them a LOT this month.  In this game, students roll a dice (or two) to determine how many hearts they can move from the candy box to their heart tin.  If they drop their hearts on the way over, they lose them.  My students have graduated from tongs this month on a few activities to ‘cheater chopsticks’. They love using these and it makes the games a bit more challenging.  Remember, you can also use different kinds of dice to differentiate this activity for different levels of readiness.

15.Fill Your Heart

Conversation hearts make a cheap and delicious manipulative for morning workstations this month.  This self-correcting activity has students moving hearts onto the candy box to represent the number shown.

Once all the hearts are moved, they open the card to see if they are correct.

16.One More Heart-Plus One More

Want to extend this activity?  This is a plus one more version.  Students use the cutie patootie people cheater chopsticks to move hearts to the candy box on the mat.  They then write that number in the box and add one more to it.

Opening the card will give them instant feedback as to whether they are correct or not.

17.We Love Having A Ball with Greater and Less Than – Grab, Spin and Win

Mini ping pong balls are the perfect size for this game, but if all you have are regular sized ping-pong balls or maybe leftover ‘beer pong’ balls from January’s morning work, you can just paint little hearts on them with paint pens.  I elected to grab up these mini pink ones and wrote numbers on the balls in different ranges.  Students will select a ball using chopsticks, identify the number and then spin the spinner to see if the greater or lesser number wins both balls.

18.Valentine’s Less And More

More uses for those plastic hearts from the Dollar Tree!  In this activity, students read the number on the self-correcting card and move that many hearts to the candy jar on the mat.  I used these cute little tongs.  You can get them from Walmart or Amazon.   Then they write the number in the box and indicate what number comes before and after.

Opening the card will tell them if they are correct.

19.Sweet Sticker Count

If there is one great thing about Valentine’s Day is the unending supply of cute stickers!  Wow!  No lack of little stickers this month.  You can find them at Walmart, Dollar Tree and most anywhere.  Students pick the stickers they would like to use and outline the heart on the sheet.  Then they record how many they used.  There are a couple of different options you can choose for extending this activity in case you want to challenge some of your students more than others.

20.Lovely Addition

If your students are beginning to work on addition to 5 or even to 10, you can customize this activity to fit their level of readiness.  Students punch out hearts from two different colored papers.  Then they take those hearts and glue them in their addition booklet to represent the equation shown.     Don’t fret if you don’t have paper punches like these.  You can always use two stampers (I saw some cute ones at Walmart!) to illustrate the equation if you prefer or even stickers.

21.Valentines Gel Bead Sort

I love the color of this month’s gel beads . . . purple, pink and white. Of course, you can really use any colors you would like but trust me when these colors are sat on a light table, they are B-E-A-U-T-I-F-U-L!!!!

But you don’t have to use a light table.  Your students will still LOVE working with these water gel beads.  They can simply sort them by color . . .

22.Valentine Gel Bead Roll and Win

. . .  or make a game out of it.  My students use a dice to determine how many beads you can add to your cookie cutter (use a variety of dice to differentiate this activity for all your learners).  The first student to fill the bottom of their cookie cutter is the winner.

23.Valentine’s Lego Challenge:  Heart, Cupcake, Flower

This month’s Lego challenge is all about Valentine’s Day!  Students use the ‘I Can’ cards as a guide, but they can really make the items any way they would like . . .

There’s a heart . . .

. . . cupcake . . .

. . . or flower. . .

They never get enough of these activities.

24.Valentine Cut and Thread Straws

Cutting and threading straws are an easy prep morning workstations that my own kinders never getting tired of visiting.  Maybe it’s because they only visit it once a month, but they love cutting and threading straws!

I love that it’s great resistance,  builds strong fine motor muscles, it is engaging and independent.

25.Sweet Friends Constructing Letters and Words

Hope you snatched up lots of those pink and red table scatter hearts.  In this station, you can use them to construct letters . . .

or sight words . . . and yes, of course, the sight word cards are editable.  If you want to make this activity even more engaging, add a light table.

26.Pink Heart Containers Count and Record

In the past, Dollar Tree carried these cute little heart containers like the ones below.

You can definitely use those for this activity, but just in case you haven’t been able to secure a set, just take a little paint pen and paint a heart on the top of a little container like these white ones you can find at the Dollar Tree.  Then all you need to do is find some cute thematic manipulatives to put in each container for counting.  I have used buttons, foam beads, erasers and flat marbles like the ones below.  Just paint a little heart on them and you’re ready to go.

27.Purple Heart Containers Adding Up

If you want to differentiate this activity, color a different colored heart on another set of containers and find a set of pink and purple manipulatives to put inside.  I decided to paint a bunch of purple and pink hearts on these.  Students count up the different colors and complete an equation on the recording sheet.

28.Mending Hearts Lowercase/Capital Matching Puzzles

Grab a tub and some fun sensory filler items for this station.  I like to use polypropylene pellets because they are easy to clean up and last forever . . . literally.  Then I throw in some table scatter, beads or whatever I can find fun and interesting.  After that, it’s easy.  Just hide the puzzle pieces in the sensory tub and your students search to find the matching lowercase and capital letters.

29.Mending Hearts Letter Sounds Matching Puzzles

. . . or the beginning letter sound and letter . . .

30.Mending Hearts CVC Words Matching Puzzles

. . .  or even cvc words and the matching picture.  Because they are printables, you can print them on various colored Astrobrights cardstock to easily differentiate them.

31.Valentine  Conversation Heart Patterns Self-correcting

Grab some conversation hearts and get your kinders patterning . . .

Students use tongs to grab the correct hearts to complete the pattern shown on the self-correcting card.  Then, simply open the card to see if they did it correctly.

If you’d rather not use ‘food’ as a manipulative, just paint some colored hearts flat marbles like the ones below.

32.Sweet Letter Match Up

Grab some table scatter hearts!  You’re going to need them.  This editable letter match up activity allows you to program the cupcake with whichever letters your students need to practice.  Then you use a Sharpie or a paint pen to make corresponding letters on the plastic heart table scatter pieces.  Students take turns selecting a heart and matching them up on their recording sheet.

33.Sweet Sight Word Match Up

There’s also an editable sight word version.

34.Key to My Heart Math

Your students are going to be begging to use this activity.  Locks and keys are HUGE engagement tools in my class.  The thing is, you need to purchase the locks and keys individually.  If you purchase a lot of three locks and keys, for instance, they will all be keyed the same way.  So I always purchase them seperately.  I also ask parents to donate them if they can.

Once you have 6-10 in your possession, simply use some small stickers to program the locks with a value (whatever skill you are working on at the time) and then program key fobs to do the same value.  Students use chopsticks to search for the locks and keys and then match them up by matching the values.

35.Heart Collector

Grab you cheater chopsticks or some tongs.  I found this heart basket at Walmart.  If you use some pipe cleaners, you can make a web pattern between the holes on the side.  Students take turns attempting to collect a heart using the chopsticks or tongs.  The ‘hearts’ are merely mini ping-pong balls with hearts painted on one side and a sight word (or letter or cvc word) painted on the other side.  If they are successful in collecting a heart and read it correctly, they keep it.  If not, it goes back in the basket.  I also take one ball and put two hearts on it (that means you get another turn) and on another, I paint a broken heart (lose a turn or put all your hearts back or whatever you decide it to mean).

36.Stack Your Rings

And finally, my students really loved playing the stack your spiders back in October, so when I saw these heart shaped rings at Walmart, I knew I needed to try and make another game for them.  I used some non-drying clay and put these plastic, heart shape straws in them so they would stand up.  Then I programmed a block to my liking.  I have a couple of different versions based on my students’ levels or readiness.  We are working on addition and subtraction, so this dice I added some + and – criteria.  Students roll the dice and either add or subtract that number.  The first one to stack their hearts to the top is the winner.

And that’s a VERY quick look at all the stations available in this months’ set of Morning Work Activities.  If you’d like to learn more, just click HERE or on the picture below.

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