Valentine Activities - Practical Life

The magic of hearts! For Valentine's Day we have adapted some of our practical life work to incorporate this sweet holiday. There are many fine motor benefits from completing these works and the children are attracted to the colors and to the hearts!

Cutting out hearts. As soon as this was on the shelf, the children are surrounding the area and waiting their turn to cut out a heart. Scissor skills are used and learned during this task . This is easy to do at home, put folded pink and red paper in a basket with half a heart traced on them. Also put a pair of child sized scissors on a tray.

We always have cutting strips on the shelf but here we made them with red construction paper and hearts. Again, scissor skills are strengthened while cutting out tiny hearts. The children put these cuttings in an envelope and take them home.

As heart cutting has been so popular for the last few days, we have added another optional step. Cut the heart, glue the back and place on a white doily.

Transferring with red jewels. Here the child practices their transferring skills using brilliant red jewels. They are attracted to the color. We always have several transferring activities on the shelf but here we have added a red color.

Another transfer activity but into a heart shaped ice cube tray. Here a child is using chop sticks to transfer the pom pom balls into the tray. These trays are pretty easy to find right now.

Gluing hearts onto paper. This is in our free art area along with the cutting hearts work. The child glues hearts to construction paper.