9 Easy Valentine's Day Activities for Toddlers

If you’ve got a little learner (or two or three!) in your house, how about creating some fun Valentine’s Day activities for toddlers? Maybe you want to take it one step further and invite some friends over and host a Valentines Day Tot school!

These are my favorite activities for toddlers with a Valentine’s Day theme. I love easy activities to set up that use simple materials. Your toddler will have so much fun with these themed activities over and over again all month long! You can turn many of these activities into a busy bag by putting it into a zippered pouch and taking it with you on the go.

Valentine Activities for Toddlers

To get you started, here are some fun and simple activities that you could set out for little hands! They only take a little bit of time to prepare and your toddler will spend hours on these educational activities!

A paint tray, some tongs, and pom poms are perfect for transferring and patterning! If tongs are too tricky, let toddlers use their fingers or try hand-over-hand to get them used to the feeling of squeezing and making a pincer grasp. This simple activity strengthens fine motor skills and is a great way to practice color recognition or counting. You can use pom poms of different sizes for this activity too.

To make this Math activity I bought these little heart shape boxes from the Dollar Tree. I just wrote numbers on them with Sharpie marker. Then, I added some red buttons (or heart beads) that they could count and match. What a fun way to practice counting and number recognition. Plus, opening and closing the boxes is one of my favorite fine motor activities in itself!

I grabbed some packages of heart shaped erasers at the Dollar Tree and traced their outlines and colors on strips of paper. I also laminate everything. I LOVE the laminator I have, which is THIS one. (affiliate link) It is an easy way to keep these activities around to reuse them. The kiddos had to match the color eraser to the strip, which is great for color and pattern recognition! If you can’t find the erasers you can also make this activity with paper hearts.

Put out a sugar shaker and some pink and red pipe cleaners and you have a great fine motor activity! I’m always surprised by how much time toddler and preschoolers spend on this activity.

Bump it up a notch and teach toddlers how to unscrew the lid and it becomes a fun activity with even more fine motor practice! Opening and closing containers and little bins is great for wrist rotation which is important for writing with a pencil.

I picked up this chips and dip plate at the Dollar Tree (notice a trend? I love the Dollar Tree!) and added some heart shaped erasers (which were all placed in the middle circle). The children had to sort the hearts into similar groups in each well of the tray. You can put all of the hearts in the middle and one in each section of the tray to get your child started. I’ve also seen this activity done with candy hearts.

Your young children will concentrate so hard with this one! I call it Pebble Balance and all you need are some popsicle sticks and glass pebbles or gems. They have to balance the pebble on the stick. If they’re ready, they can sort them by color on each stick or try patterning them in an AB pattern!

Ikea sells these cute heart-shaped ice cube molds. I added some plastic tongs and flowers for them to transfer to each section of the tray. This activity encourages one-to-one correspondence. There are many different materials and fun things that your child can transfer to the tray such as erasers, pom poms, uncooked noodles, or even blocks.

You can also use conversation hearts and challenge your toddler to pick up each one (great for encouraging the pincer grasp) and putting one in each spot of the tray. Of course, if your toddler puts more than one in each spot of the tray it is ok! Let them do it their own way. They are still learning and growing as they experiment with the materials.

Finally, I put out some plates, some labels, and pompoms in three sizes. I also added tweezers but found most little kids liked to use their fingers.

They spread the plates out, labeled them, and then sort the pompoms by size! Such simple fun that I have seen being used as pretend play as a store or kitchen.

So what do you think? Which Valentine’s Day activity will you try with your toddler first? These fun ideas are the perfect way to spend quality time and have tons of fun with your toddler.

Valentine’s Day Crafts for Toddlers

Are you looking for fun crafts to try with your toddler for Valentine’s Day? These easy heart crafts are perfect because your toddler can get creative and you don’t have to worry about how it will turn out. They always turn out fantastic.

Your toddler will love making these heart suncatchers. It is one of our favorite valentine crafts. Cut two pieces of contact paper into the shape of a heart. Encourage your child to stick tissue paper onto the contact paper. When they are finished, stick the hearts together (the sticky parts on the inside toward each other) and hang it up. This easy craft looks beautiful in the window.

This simple valentine craft is perfect for toddlers because they can paint for as long as they want and wherever they want, but the letters that spell love will still appear in the finished product.

Make heart art using just your toddlers thumb. We put ours on a bookmark to gift to family members, but you can stamp these on a big white paper heart or onto a canvas to have as a keepsake. This is just one of those fun art projects that you will look back and love to see again because of how little their fingerprints were.

More Heart Crafts for Toddlers

Make a heart masterpiece using a heart cookie cutter and red paint! Spread red paint onto a paper plate. Stamp the cookie cutter into the paint and onto your paper. The more you stamp, the cooler it looks!

Don’t have a cookie cutter? Did you know you can make heart stamps from a toilet paper tube? Check out how simple it is from Crafty Morning.

Printable Valentine’s Day Cards for Toddlers

Free Printable Pet Valentines

Of course these printable valentine cards aren’t only for toddlers. Kids of all ages love the sweet animals and special notes on these unique valentines.