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.]

After talking about the pirate themed chalk obstacle course the other day, I got to thinking about other easy, low prep games and activities you can do with kids outside. A lot of these are ideas I found on Pinterest that don’t link to blogs anymore if they ever did, but often that’s all the detail you need to figure out what’s going on.

First, a couple from blogs that are still alive. If you have a lot of trees in your yard or in your park, you probably also have a lot of sticks, so you can pretty easily do this stick maze activity from Mother Natured. Build the maze yourself or have one child build if for another. Either way it’s lots of fun and you can keep it built to use as a labyrinth or for pretend play.

If it’s hot where you live you might want outdoor activities that involve water like this fill the bucket relay game. The only thing you might not have at home is giant sponges, but this is still pretty low prep, inexpensive and lots of fun if you have two or more kids to play. Check out how to do it from The Resourceful Mama. And check out my post all about ice and water sensory activities for more ideas to beat the heat.

Make some x’s and o’s or use something you already have to be your game pieces (you can also just draw them on paper plates for a super fast version) and make a large tic tac toe board on the sidewalk. The bonus of reusable game pieces is kids can play with the same grid over and over, which is great if you don’t have a ton of space.

I also love the idea of drawing a big bullseye on the sidewalk or driveway and using beanbags or sponges to try to hit the target. If you have hula hoops you can also set them in a grassy area and have kids try to hit them.

Check out more fun outdoor games for kids from The Printable Princess. These are more for big groups of kids, but if you’ve got a classroom full these are good ones to have on hand for getting some energy out.

Do you have favorite outdoor games for kids to play when it’s hot? I’d love to hear about them!

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