Valentine's Day Activities!!

Ok, so my teacher heart loves when there's a holiday around the corner because holidays are the easiest themes to do millions of things with. We've been busy trying out all kinds of new Valentine's Day projects over here. Some are to practice different skills and concepts and some are just for fun. Most of them only take about five minutes.

Heart Patterns:

Rowin (3 years old) is just starting to understand pattens. So for this activity, I used a heart punch and made several hearts. Then I glued them onto strips of paper in different patterns and had Rowin finish each pattern by finding the heart that came next and gluing it on.

*Tips: If you are just introducing patterns, stick with AB pattens, using only two colors at a time. If your child already understands how to continue a pattern, give him more of a challenge by trying ABC, ABB, or AABC patterns.
I also say the pattern in a singsong voice so that he can hear the repetition. For example, "PINK, red, PINK, red, PINK...what comes next?"

Name Tracing with Candy Hearts:

Write your child's name in big letters on a piece of paper. Have her trace over the letters using candy hearts. Older children (maybe kindergarten through second grade) could do the same activity with sight words or spelling words.

Scrap Paper Heart:

Haha, this is a very unimpressive looking activity (I'm not blind), but it WAS good practice in cutting and gluing! :) Rowin picked out a piece of paper, cut it into smithereens, and then glued the pieces inside a big heart that I drew on a piece of paper. Seems silly but you'd be surprised how many kids get to kindergarten and don't know how to hold scissors or use a glue stick!

Heart Necklace:

If you wanted to make this educational, you could have your child make a necklace or bracelet using a pattern. We just did this for fun. I knew my son would like it because 1) he is into all things girly right now and 2) who doesn't like making beaded necklaces?! The heart beads and stretch lace were both from the Dollar Store-bonus. Getting those tiny beads onto the lace is great fine motor skill pratcice-double bonus.

Candy Sorting:

You can print this free Valentine Candy Count printable from PreKinders at http://www.prekinders.com/valentines-theme/ 
Give your child several candy hearts and have him sort them by color.

Candy Heart Count:

Another free printable from PreKinders! Here's the link again: http://www.prekinders.com/valentines-theme/ 

Have your child fill each heart with candy hearts. Then they have to count how many of each color there are. Rowin doesn't know how to write numbers yet, so after he counted, I wrote the number in a dotted line and he traced over the numbers. 

Candy Heart Graph:

One more from PreKinders :) http://www.prekinders.com/valentines-theme/
This is a good introduction to graphing. Give your child a handful of candy hearts and have her put them in the right column. Once the graph is done, you can ask your child questions like, "Which color did you have the most of? Which color did you have the least of? Which two colors did you have the same amount of?"