Valentine's Day Ideas for Preschool

I have created some fun ideas for Valentine’s Day with your little learners. I have all the things from art, sensory bin, dramatic play, Valentine cards, math and literacy.

Art Ideas:

These salad spinner hearts are fun to create and make a class mosaic out of when they are finished. I have the kids squirt paint into the salad spinner with their hearts inside the container.

I love this book Love Monster and it’s a great way to teach children to love someone (or themselves) for just they way they are. Of course it’s fun to make a directed drawing of this lovable creature after. We used water colors to paint the monster and added extra silliness by naming each one.

Here is another art idea using shaving cream and paint! Students will drip paint on the shaving cream and then swirl it around with a toothpick or something similar. Then they will place the construction paper heart on top of it and gently press down. Once they remove the heart, they will squeegee off the excess and a fun marbleized pattern will form.

We used a box lid and then added marbles and squirts of paint to create these fun marbled hearts.

Blocks/STEM idea:

I put a bunch of random Valentine props into the block area such as:

foam hearts
plastic mini cupcakes
big craft hearts
red, pink, and purple party beads
pink and red gems

They had fun creating their own “love shacks” or “heart houses” with all the props I have laid out for them!

Sensory Bin Idea:

Preschool isn’t complete without a fun sensory bin. I colored white rice pink and red and then found lots of accessories from the dollar store to add.

Literacy Ideas:

These cards are my favorite! If you are looking for some quick and easy printables, these are perfect for your students to color their own cards. I love to put these at my writing center and then they can file their personalized valentines to their friends.

I place these Valentine cards seen above in my writing center along with some coloring sheets and words in a pocket chart. They can also choose fun stickers, cut out hearts, and glue them to make their own cards. For the pocket chart list of words you can find that FREE item here!

My student’s love write and color the room activities when they first arrive in the morning. We go over each word before sending them off to find the hidden pictures around the room.

Literacy activities such as first sound hearts. These are great for a small group activity or whole group in a pocket chart.

These readers come differentiated at 3 different levels. This is the most emergent level I have and I use these on my own preschoolers. They have fun learning the basics of reading with these repetitive books!

Dramatic Play Idea:

I wanted to try something different and do a Valentine Bakery instead of a post office since my writing center focuses on making cards. I added heart stickers to all the Melissa and Doug cookies to give them some extra flair! I went to the dollar store and got some candy hearts and then used the empty boxes for the bakery.

Math Activities:

If your students are ready for the basics of subtraction, this is a great visual for your learners. Kids love rolling a dice and using white board markers to find the difference.

It’s raining hearts! This is a fun way to show ways to make 10 using two different color hearts. I use a heart puncher to quickly create the paper hearts.