Fun and Easy Valentine’s Day Activities for Preschoolers

Looking for fun and easy activities to do at home? Check out our list of Valentine’s Day activities for preschoolers.

After the dreariness of January, it’s fun to look forward to Valentine’s Day. There’s something about the red and pink decor and all the hearts that just brighten our moods and our days.

Valentine’s is a really great holiday to celebrate with young children.  You can discuss that Valentine’s Day is a special holiday where we can express our love and friendship with people.

While it’s great to celebrate, what can you do besides make Valentines and decorate cookies? You don’t have all day to figure out what kind of fun, easy activities to do with your children.

We gathered our favorite activities to share with you. These are some of my family’s favorite Valentine’s Day activities that you can do at home.

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Valentine’s Day Activities for Preschool

Here are my family’s requirements for Valentine’s Day activities for preschoolers.

  • Activities must be purposeful and build skills for my preschooler.
  • The activities must be easy enough for my preschooler to do mostly independently.
  • Must require less than 5 minutes of set-up
  • Need to use supplies we mostly already have at home.

So check out our favorite Valentine’s Day activities for preschoolers.

Toilet Paper Roll Heart Stamp

Paint is always a hit when planning Valentine’s Day activities for preschoolers.

Using toilet paper rolls (or cut apart paper towel rolls) to stamp hearts is a simple invitation to create.  It was fun to teach my children that they could make the hearts overlap, too, and create interesting designs.

Let this dry thoroughly and cut into heart shapes and you have an easy and cute Valentine to mail to relatives.

The best thing is it’s just a few supplies.

Supplies:

Steps:

  1. Gently bend your toilet paper rolls into a heart shape.
  2. Place some washable paint on a washable tray.
  3. Encourage your child to stamp on paper.

Skills:

This activity develops creativity, hand-eye coordination, and is sensory-friendly. Lately, both of my children haven’t been a fan of getting paint on their hands.. using a longer implement like the tube allow children to build more tolerance with the paint.

Valentines Roll, Count, and Cover

This simple activity is so great for pre-math skills! Your child rolls a die, counts the dots, and covers the number on the printable.

Supplies:

Steps:

  1. Print the printable.
  2. Roll a die.
  3. Show your preschooler how to count the dots.
  4. Show your preschooler how to cover the correct number with a pom pom.
  5. Repeat.

Skills:

This is a great game for developing subitizing – the ability to rapidly see a group of objects and their value. Using pom poms to cover is also great for developing pencil grip.

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Valentine Alphabet Activity for Preschoolers

Save that washable paint from the Heart Stamps and use it for this Valentine’s Alphabet Activity!

In this activity your preschooler will use pom poms to dot washable paint as you call out letters.

This activity is so adaptable – you can also do numbers. Or if you have older children, do math facts or sight words.

Supplies:

Steps:

  1. Draw a large heart.
  2. Write 2-3 of the same letter inside your heart multiple times.
  3. Call out the letter name and have your child dot the letter with paint.
  4. Use pom poms dipped into washable paint to stamp the letter.
  5. If you have an older child, try letter sounds. You can say, “dot the letter than says /a/ like apple.”

Skills:

This activity builds letter or sound recognition, fine motor skills, and sensory skills.

Pom poms are so useful for building pencil grip. When your children paint with the pom poms, their little fingers form a good pinch and get stronger.

Like painting with toilet paper tubes, this builds tolerance for getting paint on hands for children with sensory preferences.  You can adpat it by placing a pom pom in a clothespin to stamp, too, but it loses the good pencil grip practice.

Torn Paper Love Craft

My oldest child’s preschool teacher made us something similar years ago but I put my own spin on it.

We talked about how the various hearts represent the love we have inside us.  Then as it is shared and mixed together (torn paper is made into a moasic), it creates the love we have in our family.

We did this project over two days as my child’s hands are not quite strong enough to do it all in one day.

Supplies:

Steps:

  1. Draw four hearts on white cardstock.
  2. Have your preschooler use BROKEN crayons to color in the hearts.
  3. Then your preschooler will cut on the hearts.
  4. Using the thumb and first two fingers, your child will tear the hearts into little pieces.
  5. Write the word LOVE on another piece of construction paper.
  6. Have your preschooler squeeze the white glue on the letter L.
  7. Place the torn pieces on the glue to create a mosaic.
  8. Continue with the other letters.

Skills:

This activity builds pencil grip in four ways! Coloring with broken crayons builds a good pencil grip by isolating the thumb and index finger. Tearing also requires using the fingers that form pencil grip.

Scissor practice and squeezing white glue also build hand strength.  Plus they both require good hand-eye coordination.

Valentine Stickers Match

My preschooler had so much fun with this easy Valentine’s activity. He liked seeing and discussing the various stickers, especially the Valentine’s dogs!

Supplies:

Steps:

  1. On a large piece of paper, place two identical Valentine’s stickers on it.
  2. Repeat several times.
  3. encourage your preschooler to draw a line with a broken crayon to match the stickers.

Skills:

This activity builds visual discrimination – the ability to look at different objects and find and classify the differences in the details.

It also develops pre-writing as your child will draw lines to match. Using broken crayons

Valentine’s Play Dough Cookies

Make Valentine’s “cookies” with play-doh.  Your preschooler will push beads into play-doh and then dig them out. This is great for fine motor skills.

Technically the tray is optional but I do recommend some sort of boundary to keep the beads from rolling all over.

Supplies:

Steps:

  1. Give your child play dough and cookie cutters.
  2. Place beads on a tray.
  3. Show your child how to press the dough into a heart shape.
  4. Decorate with beads.
  5. During clean-up, make sure to involve your child in removing the beads from the play dough.

Skills:

Using play-doh is so great for developing hand and finger strength. Pinching the beads isolates the thumb and index finger.

Valentine’s Preschool Color Sort

Gather some objects around your home like duplos, megabloks or a counter like our dinosaurs.

Supplies:

Steps:

  1. Draw and cut out 3-4 hearts.
  2. Encourage your preschooler to sort by color on the hearts.
  3. This activty bridged into my child playing dinosaurs independently.

Skills:

Learning to classify by color is an important preschool skill. It develops critical thinking and problem solving necessary for math.

Conclusion

Enjoy Valentine’s Day with these fun and easy activities.

What is your favorite way to celebrate Valentine’s Day?

 

 

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