Valentine Chocolates

We made some delicious Valentine chocolate!

Ingredients:
1 cup raw cacao butter, melted
2 cups raw cacao powder
Dash sea salt
Sweetener to taste (about 1/2 to 1 cup)

Optional:
1 tsp probiotic powder
1 tbsp flax oil
1 tpsb 'green vibrance' super food

First we examined the cacao butter and enjoyed its scent, taste, and texture as it absorbed into our skin and melted in the pan.

Add the sweetener (we used maple syrup).

Mix in the cacao powder.

Add optional ingredients - we tried these with a few of the groups and they ate them all up!

Add salt.  The kids love this Himalayan Pink Salt in a grinder!

Pour into heart molds.

Freeze for 10 minutes, then store in the fridge.

Mama Jenn brought us a wonderful assortment of flowers and vases so the children could create bouquets for Valentine's Day.  Check out her beautiful floral designs at www.freshlypickedflowers.com.  We can also thank Jenn for the scrumptious chocolate recipe above!

We explored the different types of flowers and their scents and talked a lot about our favorite colors and who were going to give our flowers to.

We learned about different design elements and picked our focal flowers and our filler flowers. We played with complementary colors and contrasting textures to create a bouquet that was uniquely our own.

Flower arranging is an important lesson in the Montessori Practical Life area and was a very meaningful activity for us. You can see the sense of confidence and pride we experienced as we gently created a beautiful arrangement. 

“Education is a natural process carried out by the child and is not acquired by listening to words but by experiences in the environment.” (Maria Montessori)

Making valentine cards...

molding and painting Valentine hearts too!

Our chocolate experience inspired us to learn more about the rainforest where it grows.  We checked out this cool globe from Stella Luna toys that shows a variety of animals that live in different parts of the world.

We learned about some interesting rain forest animals and practiced some great Spanish words like: amigo, gracias, pato, fiesta, and siesta in the fun book 'Spike The Mixed Up Monster' by Susan Hood.

We worked on different rain forest animal puzzles, collages, and coloring pages.

We read "Slowly, Slowly, Slowly said the Sloth" by Eric Carle and then the kids walked very very slowly to Magic Tree to hang from the branches like a sloth!

We made rain forest pizzas inspired by plants that grow in the rain forest: pineapple, mangoes, coconut, banana, goji berries and peanut butter.

We learned how pineapples gather water in their leaves to stay hydrated in the rain forest.

All this talk of the rain forest had us itching for a trip, so in storytime yoga we got on a plane and flew to Costa Rica...

when we arrived we saw some beautiful Kapok trees...

and cooled off by a rain forest waterfall...

then we spotted a brood of cobras...

a tiny tree frog...

and a happy swarm of Blue Morpho butterfiles!

We were inspired by Miss Stephanie's story time at the Twin Oaks Library to celebrate Chinese New Year!  We read some great books, made dragon puppets, and worked on tangram puzzles.

A tangram is an ancient Chinese puzzle of 7 simple shapes that can be arranged to form a variety of more complex shapes.  Playing with tangrams can help kids learn to classify shapes, learn about spacial relationships, develop strong problem solving skills, and develop an intuitive sense of geometry.

A great way to introduce tangrams is to simply let kids create their own complex shapes. But traditionally, tangrams are treated as puzzles. The player is shown a target shape (in outline, or silhouette only) and then asked to recreate that shape using the seven pieces.

We have a new friend!  A screech owl is living in our bird box!

Construction kids!

See ya next time!