Are you a fan of Valentine’s Day? While I’m not into buying $10 cards or spending tons of money on this highly-marketed holiday, I am all about showing my husband and my girls that I love them. We started creating a love playlist by selecting a song each year that reminds us of each other, and I absolutely love it. There are so many ways to show your family and your students how much you love them, and you can start by creating some Valentine’s Day activities preschoolers will absolutely love!
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Valentine's Day Lesson Plans
Heart Freeze
Letter Identification & Sight Word Game
Movement and a freeze game? Yes, please! Especially when it comes to those crazy holiday vibes the kids get.
Spread the lettered hearts or the hearts with sight words around the room. Give each student a recording sheet with either uppercase letters, lowercase letters, or sight words. Then, get singing!
As you sing the “Heart Freeze” song, the kiddos can move or dance around the room. But, when you get to the end of the song, they have to freeze by the closest heart and trace the matching letter or sight word on their recording sheet. Lots of laughter and lots of fun with this one!
Letter identification, sight words, letter formation, and a way to get out those holiday wiggles with these Valentine’s Day activities preschoolers will love!
Materials:
- Heart Freeze Letter Identification Game
- writing tools
Heart Hunt
Initial Sound Activity
Where’s Waldo, Easter egg hunts, Hide-and-Seek, sign me up! There is such a thrill in the discovery, not only for me but for our preschoolers.
This is why incorporating a scavenger hunt is so exciting!
This Valentine’s Day scavenger hunt can be done with either letters or initial sounds. Since we focused on letters with our Heart Freeze game, I hung the hearts around the room with the initial sound pictures showing to mix it up.
Tip: Tape along the left-hand side so the hearts flip like a book to show the letters on the back.
Then, let the games begin! Once your little tot finds a heart, say the word, the beginning sound, and then flip the heart to check before tracing the matching letter on the recording sheet.
You’ve got observation skills plus a ball-full of literacy skills tied up in this one!
Materials:
- Heart Hunt Initial Sound Activity
- tape
- clipboards
Love Bug Syllables
Valentine Literacy Activity
One year, I asked for a hot fudge sundae for my birthday breakfast, and woke up with it sitting next to me (Thanks, Mom!). And just like me, this Love Bug is obsessed with sweet treats!
There are two ways to play this Valentine’s Day literacy game: just count the syllables in each sweet treat and feed it to Love Bug; OR turn it into a game of “Memory.”
And you know me, gotta love those games! It’s a great way for me to spend time with my kids and exercise my brain.
So we placed our pairs of sweet treats face down and tried to find the matches. Then, we sang the Love Bug song, counting the syllables of each word. Finally, we fed our treat to the Love Bug with the matching number of syllables. Munch, munch, munch!
Materials:
- Love Bug Syllables
- 3 blocks
Valentine Rhyme BINGO
Rhyming Word Game
What is it about BINGO that just gives you that tingle of excitement? It’s crazy because I’m all about games of strategy – Spades, Rummikub, Clue. But I also love BINGO. Maybe because I’m just hoping that my number gets called first, or maybe because I get to shout when I win.
Either way, one way to make learning ridiculously awesome is to incorporate some sort of educational BINGO. And for Valentine’s Day, we worked on finding those rhyming pairs.
Each kiddo gets a BINGO board with the same nine Valentine-themed pictures on it, just in a different arrangement. Then, flip over one of the cards and mark the rhyming word on your BINGO board. We used plastic hearts to add to that Valentine theme. The first to get three in a row wins!
Materials:
- Valentine Rhyme BINGO Game
- heart counters
Valentine Writing Tray
Sensory Letter Formation
Making writing a sensory experience in early education is so important. Our brains digest more when learning is multi-sensory, so tracing letters on a worksheet is definitely NOT my favorite way to practice letter formation. It’s not only boring, but it doesn’t help those kiddos who learn best through a kinesthetic approach.
So get out that shaving cream, those sandpaper letters, play dough, or in this case, a sand tray, to make letter formation multi-sensory and easier to learn.
To go with our Valentine’s Day theme, we used red sand and small heart beads in our writing tray. Pair that with these lettered hearts, and you’ve got an exciting invitation to make letters.
And now, the kids can see the letters as they write, hear the sand move, and feel the sand (especially if they are using their fingers to write). Boom! Multi-sensory writing.
Materials:
- Lettered Hearts
- writing tray
- colored sand (Dollar Tree)
- paintbrushes
- Optional: candy hearts or heart beads
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MORE Valentine's Day Activities
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