Valentine’s Day Activities Using Hearts

There are so many different classroom activities you can do around Valentine’s Day, from STEM activities to art projects and math activities.

I wasn’t sure how to share more ideas this year than I already have, but I thought for this one I would just share activities of various sorts that involve heart shapes.

For example, this color sorting heart game from Mason Jar of Memories. You can do it with the printables and buckets as shown, or cut hearts out of construction paper and have a larger heart of the same color somewhere in the room so kids have to go to a different place in the room for each color. That makes it a bit of a scavenger hunt to find the hearts and put them in the right place.

Another way to get little ones moving with a Valentine’s theme is playing musical hearts. This idea is from No Time for Flash Cards, and in involves writing different actions on hearts the kids walk on. When the music stops they do what their heart says.

If you scroll down in this post from Mrs. Plemons’ Kindergarten you’ll find another use for big hearts kids can step on: write the letters of the alphabet and do a musical alphabet hearts game, where the child identifies the letter. (You can also use them for an alphabet scavenger hunt, which you’ll also find in this post.)

Or you can put numbers on them and have kids match the number to another heart with that number represented in dots (or hearts, or whatever you want) like in this idea from Active Littles. Kids can also cut out the hearts (or you can do it for them) and use them to help them learn how to count to 20. This one is form Happy Toddler Playtime.

I guess we’re going to need some foam hearts for all these fun heart shaped activities!

Growing Up Ladybug and How to Become a Butterfly are both by Stepanka Sekaninova and illustrated by Linh Dao, and they came out at the same time and are on similar themes, so let’s look at them together.

Growing Up Ladybug is narrated by Mariella, a seven-spot ladybug. She talks about the parts of a ladybug, where they live, different kinds of ladybugs, why humans love them, their defenses against predators and the life cycle of a ladybug.

The drawings are cute if not always scientifically accurate, it’s not in such a way that’s likely to confuse kids (who probably already know that ladybug mamas don’t push their larval babies around in strollers, for instance.

It’s a good general description of the life cycle of a lady bug and why we like having them around.

About the book: 32 pages, hardcover. Published 2026 by Albatross Media. Suggested retail price $16.95.

Similarly, How to Become a Butterfly covers the life cycle of a butterfly, starting with caterpillars eating burning nettle leaves. (Here Amanda is the narrator.) The book talks about a few of the more than 18,000 daytime butterflies in the world as well as other creatures that live in the meadow (there’s that ladybug again, along with crickets, bees and other bugs).

It also covers some of the enemies of caterpillars like wasps and spiders, and the defenses that caterpillars use to try to prevent being eaten. It illustrates how caterpillars grow and change as they molt and prepare to pupate, and what a caterpillar looks like before and while it is forming its chrysalis. And while the book uses the word metamorphasis it doesn’t really talk about what happens between the caterpillar forming a chrysalis and the butterfly hatching.

This butterfly is a peacock butterfly, and once it hatches the book covers the parts of a butterfly and the life cycle. It also talks about nocturnal moths (though it says nocturnal butterflies are “usually called moths” when moths are actually a different species) and what butterflies do at night.

I’m maybe a little hard on this book because my daughter is a butterfly expert from way back, but it is still cute and good for the very basic basics of the butterfly life cycle.

Both books would be fun additions to your bookshelf for younger kids starting to learn about different animals or who have an interest in insects.

About the book: 32 pages, hardcover. Published 2026 by Albatross Media. Suggested retail price $16.95.

Have you read?

Leave a Reply