With Valentine’s Day coming up, you can make this day special for your kids as well. Here are some fun ideas that you and your kids can participate in together, while learning, and working on some gross and fine motor skills. Have fun!
1) Scavenger Hunt: Hide a bunch of hearts or valentines all over the house or room. Place these items in hard to reach spots so your kids will have to get on their hands and knees (quadruped position), tip toes, or run to find them. Quadruped position will help build shoulder, core and leg strength; while tip toes works on calf strength, which will allow for more power with jumping, skipping, and running!
2) Heart Hop: Cut out large construction paper hearts and tape to them to the floor. Have your kids help so they can work on their cutting and fine motor skills. Put on some music and have them hop on to each heart. You can either have them hop with two feet or one foot. If you want to work on hop scotch, place the hearts into a hopscotch line up and hop away!
3) Make a heart with your feet: Get some paint and use your feet to create a heart on large construction paper. This will allow your kids to work on balance with their feet close together, which makes things more difficult. To keep them in this position, add a ball and play toss, to challenge their balance to keep their feet on the floor to make a heart.
4) Musical Hearts: This is similar to musical chairs except instead of sitting, kids will work on gross motor activities. What you will need is construction paper, scissors, and a marker. Cut out large hearts that you can place on the floor for kids to step on. Write whatever activities you would want on the hearts (5 jumping jacks, standing on one leg for 10 seconds, hop 5 times, crab walk, etc.) All these activities work on strength, coordination, and motor planning. Once you have all your hearts, place them on the floor and start some music, have your child and friends or family walk around the hearts until the music stops. Once the music stops, find a heart and perform the activity. Find the link here.
5) Valentine’s Day glitter and sensory board: For only two dollars, Target has some great valentine’s day themed vinyl placemats that would be a great way to make a sensory board. Then, all you need is some shaving cream (unscented to avoid any allergies), glitter, and sparkles. Spray the shaving cream on the board and let your child feel the texture of the cream. Once they are comfortable with the cream, feel free to add some sparkles and glitter to make it more colorful and texture oriented. They can make different shapes, like hearts, and X’s and O’s. Find the link here.
6) Heart straws: This activity is meant to help your child with their fine motor skills. All you need are some straws, play dough, and heart shaped pastas. Find a hard surface, like a cutting board and use play dough to make a base for your stand. Place a clump of play dough on the table or board and stick a fun colorful straw as a pole. Then have your child grab the heart shape pastas and start stacking and unstacking. This will work on your child’s finger pinching grip and hand, eye coordination.
7) Heart themed sensory box: This is a great activity to help promote learning through sensory input. You will need, a plastic bin, rice, shredded red paper, and Valentine’s Day items. Some Valentine’s day items you could use include hearts cut out with different textures (felt, paper, glittered ), heart bracelets, balloons, and whatever else you may want. You can promote learning by having your child put in only the felt hearts, and then only the glittered, promoting categorizing. Then you can have them count how many bracelets you may have as they put them into the bin. If you have different color hearts, have them choose the pink ones, red ones, or white ones, in order to learn the colors. Find the link here.