I Drew a Heart 3 Ways

I Drew a Heart by Gillian Sze (Author), Naoko Stoop (Illustrator) is the perfect book to read during the Lunar New Year and Valentine's Day. The lyrical book celebrates a multigenerational diverse family, creativity, and love through showcasing a little boy spending the day drawing all kinds of hearts as a reminder of his favorite memories. 

After reading the story we invited the children to create hearts in numerous ways just like the little boy in the story. The early years are all about setting the foundation for the rest of a child’s education. Creating inviting and intentional ways for children to mentally, academically, and physically prepare for writing/drawing in open-ended ways helps get them ready through developmentally appropriate practices and engaging manner that ignites their curiosity and wonder for learning. 

1. Invitation to Draw a Heart in the Sand: On our light table we placed Prewriting Sand & Light Table Tray where the children were invited to try drawing in the sand with their fingers. 

2. Invitation to Make a Heart: Play-dough and heart stencils were placed in a tray and the children were invited to create the shape of heart however they wanted to. 

3. Invitation to Decorate Hearts: On a large piece of butcher paper we drew a variety of different sized hearts, provided loose parts (recycled bottle caps, translucent & colored pebbles, flat marbles, acrylic & wooden hearts, gem cubes, and ). The children were invited to decorate the hearts. 

When a child is invited to explore, create, and play with open ended materials such as this, it gives them the opportunities to work on spatial awareness, exposes them to different formations of shapes/lines/designs/letters/numbers, attention to detail, enhancing their language skills as they communicate what they see or what they are doing in, developing attention span, and ultimately they are enhancing/building those pre-writing/fine motor skills so that writing/drawing will come at ease once they are ready!