Flowers and hearts and chocolates – oh, my! Are you as ready for Valentine’s Day as I am?? After the coziness and even dreariness of January, I always feel like Valentine’s Day signals the coming arrival of Spring – and it makes me SO happy! To get in the lovey-dovey spirit, I look forward to taking out all of our Valentine’s Day fine motor activities. Not only do they cheer us up with their vibrant colors, they also act as Valentine’s Day gifts for family and friends! I hope you find lots of happy activities in this post!
Table of Contents – CLICK to jump ahead!
Valentine’s Day Sensory Bin
Our Valentine’s Day sensory bin is filled with dry white beans, Valentine’s Day table scatter, pompoms, and tons of mini erasers!
I’ve found that making new themed or seasonal sensory bins is super simple and inexpensive if you just take the seasonal colors from the materials you already have! So that’s exactly what I did with our supplies! We’ve had these materials for years (shop Hobby Lobby’s seasonal sale for fun items!) and we’ll be able to use these materials for so many activities!
Puffy Sticker Color Sort
Every season, I stock up on seasonally-themed puffy stickers when they go on sale at Hobby Lobby. We use these stickers for SO many activities! They make such fun manipulatives and add so much seasonal spark to our sensory bins.
Some of the ways we use our puffy stickers include color sorting, image sorting, pattern making, counting, and more!
Puzzles and Matching Mats
One of the very first sensory bin resources I created for LG were these handy little puzzles and matching mats. It was a great way for us to transition our free sensory bin play to academic practice! Using these mats LG practiced her fine motor skills while also working on matching, visual discrimination, and problem solving!
Preschool Skills Matching Mats
These Preschool skills matching mats were created once LG grew out of her sensory bin puzzles and matching mats! She was ready to move on to other skills, but really loved the style of matching mats. These are still some of our favorite activities to work on!
This set includes 5 matching mats! Practice identifying letters, beginning sounds, counting, shapes and colors!
Valentine Color Sort
Never underestimate the power of a super SIMPLE sensory bin activity! I found these little bowls on sale at the grocery store one day a few years ago, tossed them in LG’s sensory bin, and BOOM. She began color sorting like crazy! To this day, color sorting is one of her favorite activities to do independently! This has led to all sorts of sensory bin fun, like cooking up “soups”!
Valentine’s Day Fine Motor Worksheets
Fine motor skills are so important, but they do NOT have to be time-consuming and stressful! This set of practice pages includes 25 NO PREP fine motor skills worksheets, and is perfect for adding extra fine motor skills practice and crafts to your learning time! Children practice tracing, cutting and clueing, coloring, and so much more!
Valentine Play Dough Tray
Next is one of our ALL TIME favorite activities – a Valentine’s Day play dough tray! Play dough is pure magic when it comes to practicing fine motor skills, and the possibilities for play come endless!
We’ve been loving homemade play dough lately, but we had SO much pink, purple and red PlayDoh containers left that I just grabbed those for this theme’s tray! Then I added some cookie cutters, gems, little unicorns, and a few other goodies so that LG could let her imagination run wild!
Valentine STEM Tray
A few years ago, I found this set of materials in a jar at Target for a STEAL! (If you have a Target near you, stop by to see if they brought it back!) It came with all of these goodies included in our black, Dollar Tree party tray. These materials are perfect for making a STEM tray in one simple step! LG has had so much fun making all sorts of creations!
If you don’t find the Target jar or want to make this tray with items you already have a home, try using the following…
- colorful pompoms
- paper or plastic straws
- tape
- pipe cleaners
- heart stickers
- glue
- construction paper
Valentine’s Day Fine Motor Tray
This Valentine’s Day fine motor tray is probably my favorite resource for the month! I’m trying something a little different for this theme – we’re keeping as many of our fine motor activities in this ONE tray as possible! That way everything is in one spot when we need it! This tray includes TONS of activities!
- We have lots of little “scrap” pieces of paper in Valentine’s Day colors. These bits are perfect for “tear art” activities like the hears in the top left picture. Simply tear off the cover and the rest of the heart is sticky and ready to go! (We found these at Hobby Lobby!)
- We’ll be creating tons of Valentine’s Day cards with this tray! LG has tons of crayons, stickers, paint sticks and more to choose from! I also wrote lots of names so that she can personalize her cards for friends and family. (This is a great way to practice handwriting and spelling!)
- Beads are a fabulous fine motor practice tool! I tossed a bunch of Valentine’s Day colored beads in a section of the tray with some pipe cleaners and pattern strips to make a quick pattern practice activity!
- And of course we’ll be using this tray during our worksheet practice time (we love to color our answers!) and for plenty of free art time!
Fine Motor Centers
You can find lots of other fine motor skills practice printables in our Valentine’s Day Math and Literacy Centers for Toddlers and Preschoolers!
Let’s Hang Out!
I hope these Valentine’s Day fine motor activities keep your kiddos engaged all February long! Looking for some other Valentine’s Day-themed Preschool activities? Check out tons of activities by CLICKING HERE!
I’d love to chat and get you know better! Come hang out with us in some of our favorite places!
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