Last week I got excited about putting activities together using red, purple, and pink with lots of hearts! Well… Valentine’s Day IS right around the corner! I hope you will enjoy these 8 Montessori Inspired Valentine Trays as much as Little Bee and I did. 🙂
1. Valentine Pompom Transfer and Match Up
Montessori education encourages the development of the hand in order to properly develop the brain. This beautiful Valentine transfer activity helps to develop a child’s fine motor hand movements. The child implements the use of the tweezers to transfer a pompom to the dot on the printable. Please find this gorgeous free Valentine Do-a-Dot Printable on the Gift of Curiosity blog.
2. Practical Life Threading with Straws
Below you will find three tray set-ups for varying degrees of threading challenge accomplished by my two year old child. Little Bee has practiced threading ever since he turned one year old using a straw and large wooden beads. He has also mastered threading a pipe-cleaner into a large “holed” straw. Visit – Montessori Toddler Study of Yellow, for threading activities for a one year old. In the trays below, I cut several straws into one inch pieces for threading and also to encourage color patterning.
Little Bee started by threading the straw pieces onto a pipe-cleaner. Once he mastered that, he moved on to threading the straw pieces onto a thick string. In the last tray, I set up a couple popsicle sticks in an upright position for Little Bee to practice threading from a different perspective. I glued a felt heart onto the smaller popsicle stick, which enabled the stick to stand up. With the larger popsicle stick, I made a ball of play-dough and stuck the stick into it. Little Bee practiced placing a red piece and then a pink piece in an alternating pattern on the sticks.
3. Creating Shapes with Play-dough
Little Bee and I always enjoy a bit of fun when learning shapes. I helped Little Bee with these shapes by rolling the play-dough into long cylinders and then helping him match the shapes on these awesome Valentine Play-dough Mats printables by the Gift of Curiosity blog.
4. 1 Corinthians 13 Scripture Matching Memory Game
These fun Biblical printables, for the famous love chapter in 1 Corinthians 13, can be found in this Tot Pack on Love. I cut out each of the individual hearts and then traced them into a flower shaped pattern. There are a total of 15 hearts, so I created 3 flowers. I then numbered the flowers to match the hearts. That way a young child can match up the numbers on the back of the heart with the numbers on the flowers and begin to become familiar with the order of the love chapter. An older child could try to match up the hearts to the flowers by reading each heart and correctly putting the hearts in order. The child could check their memory by looking at the back of the heart for the matching number.
5. Lovestruck Number Counting and Match Up
These number printables are great for learning with their bright colors and easy to read number patterns. I added the “Lovestruck” clothes pins to the mix for a fun Valentine flare.  Find these “Teach Kids Numbers Free Printable” on the Tips from a Typical Mom Blog.
6. Heart Shape Recognition and Matching Game
Here is another great match up game using red and white color tones and shape recognition for matching. At first, the tray can be presented with one to three heart shaped pairs. As the child masters the first sets of shapes, then add another pair to the mix until all 6 pairs are added. These heart shape pairs can be found in this free Tot Pack ~ Love printable.
7. Counting Play-dough Trays
These trays, with free Valentine Play-dough Mats, make number recognition fun! The child can shape the numbers out of play-dough or add number puzzle pieces (like I did.) Â Any small round object can be used for the counting part – beans, pompoms, play-dough, or heart candies.
8. Valentine Sensory Treasure Bowl
After all our tray work was completed, I tossed all our Valentine decorations into a sensory treasure bowl for Little Bee to explore. I used white beans with silver glitter as the filler. I enjoy making him a treasure bowl for each holiday.
Please visit our other sensory treasure bowls –
10 Christmas Montessori Inspired Tot Trays
What a fun round-up of activities! 🙂