Use What You Have for Valentine’s Themed Fun

Sometimes making learning activities that go with a holiday means going out and buying lots of holiday-themed items, which isn’t great for your budget or the environment. While all those heart-shaped things are cute, there are things you can do without having to buy any other supplies that are still a lot of fun.

These Valentine’s Day learning activities use things you probably already have in the classroom (and at least a couple of them are things you probably have at home even if you don’t homeschool).

Take the Valentine brick challenge from 123 Homeschool 4 Me. This is a printable list of 28 challenges related to love and Valentine’s Day that kids can make with Legos. It includes things like making the word “love” out of bricks, making a heart with bricks, a box of candy and other fun challenges. (Head to the blog for the printable.)

If you have snap cubes you can use these Valentine’s Day themed building challenges from Kindergarten Worksheets and Games. (They could be done with Legos, too, but might not come out exactly the same since Legos are not cubes.) This one includes a math activity in that it has kids count how many blocks they used. You could also talk about how many blocks of each color, does one project use more or fewer blocks compared to another, and other math concepts.

Or try these fine-motor mats from Life over C’s. They use similar Valentine’s Day symbols but kids can cover up the images with different colored pom-poms (or use buttons, plastic discs, whatever small and colorful you have on hand). They can use their hands to move the pom-poms or use tweezers to make it a bit more of a challenge. Kids could also use these printed in black and white with dot markers to “color in” the shapes.

[Photo: Kindergarten Worksheets and Games.]