**This post about Valentine’s Day fine motor activities includes affiliate links.**
Coming up with Valentine’s Day fine motor activities was a blast this month! Valentine’s Day is a great reason to celebrate in the classroom so of course I had to develop some fine motor activities for my students. I have 10 low prep fine motor activities that your students are going to love. These Valentine’s Day themed activities get us ready to celebrate kindness and community in our classroom. Check them out!
1. Ripped Paper Heart
This ripped paper heart activity comes straight from my February Scissor Skills Boxes and they’re a great precutting activity for the classroom. I print off heart templates and grab some paper scraps. My students rip the paper into small pieces and then they glue it onto the heart. I’ve started making little books with my students so they can complete this activity multiple times throughout the month. They’ll create different color hearts, then glue them into their books to make a color book that they enjoy reading and sharing with their families.
2. Conversation Heart Stamping
Do your students love play dough as much as mine?! I grabbed some sparkley play dough and some letter stamps. Then I created some heart templates and letters and sight words to the hearts. I printed those out and laminated them (we’re tough on materials in our classroom). Then I found a couple old heart shaped cookie cutters. First my students roll out the dough and make a heart shape. Then they choose a card from the pile. After they have a card they will use the letter stamps to spell the word or find the matching letter. I just love when fine motor skills and academic skills come together!
3. Dot Paint Heart
Cotton swab painting has become pretty standard in our classroom. My students love it and I love the fine motor skills it promotes. I made a quick heart template that you can grab in the resource library. I print out the page and grab some paint and cotton swabs for my students. Then my students use the paint to target the dots on the paper.
Teacher tip: Cut your cotton swabs in half. This provides a smaller item for your students to grasp while painting.
4. Valentine Snipping
Snipping is an essential skill for students to develop scissor skills. This activity is part of my scissor skills box resource. I print out the templates and cut them into long strips. My students choose a strip and snip the images off the paper. I created two add on activities so my students are doing something more functional with the snipped paper. In one activity my students sort the images and in the other they are counting out images match a target number.
5. Heart Sort
I love putting together a sensory bin in my classroom. I usually make a different sensory bin for each season. This season, I wanted something simple and went to raid my kitchen cabinets. I found some black beans and thought they would work just fine. The beans got added to a bin with some foam shaped hearts. I tossed in some tweezers and tongs and prepared some sorting cards. My students use the tweezer and tongs to pull hearts from the bins and sort them onto the correct color card.
6. Dot Sticker Hearts
We’re focusing on targeting a lot in my classroom right now. I want students to be able to focus on where they are placing items so as we get ready to write letters they can focus on where to place their pencil. This is an easy activity that my students love. I prepared a heart template and grabbed some color coding stickers. The goals is for my students to add stickers to the heart template. We try to focus on placing the stickers on the line to make a heart. Don’t have color coding stickers? Just use any stickers you have on hand. The focus is on students targeting their sticker placement!
7. Yarn Wrapped Heart
I received a donation of a HUGE box of yarn a few years ago so I’ve been trying to come up with yarn activity ideas for a while. To complete this activity I cut a heart shape out of card stock. If your students need a more sturdy item, I would use cardboard. Then I grabbed some yarn from the huge box I received and tied it onto the heart. My students take the yarn and wrap it around the heart. I like how this activity is similar to lacing but a little simpler for my students who don’t yet understand how to complete a lacing card.
8. Bead Counting
We really enjoy using theraputty in the classroom right now. I hid a bunch of heart shaped beads inside one of our containers of putty and printed out some number cards for my students. The goal is for my students to find the same number of beads and add them to the number card. If your students aren’t counting yet, you can use the color cards from the sensory bin instead!
9. Out of this World Shape Cutting
Once we’re cutting straight lines, I often start introducing cutting simple shapes to my students. This activity is part of my scissor skills resource. I print the template and trim the pages into squares. Students choose a piece and cut out the simple shape inside the square.
I also created two add on activities to help students practice sorting and shape identification. These are simple no prep pages that you print out and add to your activity. It makes the activity more functional and engaging for my students.
10. Candy Box Button Placement
Buttons have been a recent addition to our fine motor activities. I love the small size and how my students need to use their pincher fingers to place the buttons. I created a quick candy box printable that I printed for students. Then I grabbed my button collection. My students add a button to each piece of candy in the box. I also created a black and white version so your students can practice gluing buttons to the paper. I find that teaching students to use a glue bottle is a great experience and something they really want to learn how to do.
These are 10 of our favorite Valentine’s Day fine motor activities for the classroom. Want to grab the printables for your classroom? Head to the resource library and download them now!
