Before we dive right in, don’t forget to download your free Valentine’s cutting and counting printable! If you want to see all the samples and download link, check out this post! FREE Valentine’s Day Cutting and Counting Printable
Have you heard the term Posting before? I’m going to be honest with you and say that in all my 15 years of education experience I had never heard that term used for these types of activities before this year. Chances are if you’ve hung around the Montessori side of instagram for any length of time you’ve come across someone calling the simple act of putting small items into a container a posting activity. In my research, I cannot find any source of where this term comes from. Not that it really matters anyway! If you were confused on the term, just know you were probably doing some type of posting activity without even knowing it!
So What is it? What are the benefits? Isn’t that just dumping and filling?
Posting is basically placing, dropping, pulling, or transferring things in and out of containers. It builds object permanence, dexterity, and hand eye coordination. Through posting activities your child is building vocabulary of positional words along with math skills like capacity. And yes, it’s dumping and filling but oh so much more!
I’m going to share a few of our favorite Valentine’s Day Themed Posting Activities, however, these ideas and items aren’t just limited to February. I plan a few of these posting activities for every month using a lot of the same materials! Because we talk about sending mail to people we love and we make mailboxes during Valentine’s Day, February just naturally lends itself to built in posting activities!
Dollar Tree has these adorable mini drawers that happen to have a heart as the opener. I grabbed two because I knew we’d use them over an over. Not only is this perfect for practicing opening and closing drawers, we’ve used the heart hole for posting small hearts.
You can also use mini erasers like these from the dollar section at Target.
I would be remiss if I didn’t have an old fashioned Valentine’s Day mail box to post some foam hearts inside! There are a few things working here: Trying to fit the heart inside the correct way, opening and closing the lid, and object permanence.
Along the same lines as before is this actual mailbox complete with a back door that opens. This one has gotten way more use because of that feature! I also found that the frustration level is much lower with this particular box if we used wooden hearts and smaller foam stickers. They are easier to fit into the slot.
I introduced this double sided spice container during January. I presented it with Q-tips. It was so fun to watch the kids figure out how to hold the jar with their non-dominate hand and post with their dominate hand. Kids are fascinating creatures! For February, I added pom poms to see if they could understand which side they would need to use. It took a few tries to understand, but they got it!
This next activity was a DIY that I had some very low expectations with but has turned out to be the one my youngest charge, J who is 19mos, goes back to two or three times a day.
I started with those green oasis foam blocks you see in the floral section at Dollar Tree or Hobby Lobby.
I covered two blocks in painters tape because I HATE the feeling of this stuff and it crumbles really badly.
I poked seven small holes in each block then added seven heart picks, also from Dollar Tree, into each one. My original plan was to have this be a color matching activity, but it has gotten way more use as a pull and poke activity!
This has been presented in two ways, with hearts and without hearts. I was honestly impressed that my younger charge has spent more time with this thus gaining mastery over something I didn’t even think he was going to use!
There have been times throughout the day when J is really quiet and I know exactly where to find him!
I hope these activities have been helpful for your future posting works! As always, connect with me @rachrunstx on instagram or theteachingnannyblog@gmail.com
The Teaching Nanny 
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