Valentine’s Day – Mrs Mama Bird

Happy February! I have been busy whipping up some fun and engaging Valentine’s Day themed alphabet activities for your preschoolers! I am excited to share some alphabet cover up mats, a roll and write game, an alphabet building mat, as well as an alphabet clip card in this post. Everything in this post is designed to help your preschoolers develop letter recognition, writing, and fine motor skills.

The idea behind this set of resources was to create several engaging activities that you could do with the SAME set of letter cards. My hope is that this saves some of your valuable time!! All you have to do is prep the cards once and you will have them ready to go for all of the activities in this post.

Alphabet cover up activities are always a go-to for practicing letter names and sounds. You can set the letter cards that you want to use (uppercase or lowercase) in a sensory bin for your preschoolers to find. They can take turns finding a letter, saying the name and/or sound, and covering it up on the mat. It’s always fun to add Valentine’s Day themed manipulatives for covering the letters. I am using Valentine heart table scatter from Hobby Lobby in the picture but you can also use mini erasers, flat marbles, pom poms or red or pink unifix cubes. If you don’t mind using the cover up mat only once, dot markers are always a fun choice too!

The cover up mats come in two variations – uppercase and lowercase letters. You can choose to have your preschoolers match uppercase to uppercase, uppercase to lowercase or lowercase to lowercase. The black and white version of each variation is also included if you prefer to print in black and white for single use on print on colored paper.

This set of activities also includes a Color the Room and Trace the Room recording sheet for both uppercase and lowercase letters. You can place the alphabet cards around the room and have your preschoolers find them and color or trace the matching letter on their sheet. My 4 year old loves doing these activities because it gets her up and moving around and because it is like a little game of hide and seek with letters.

If you have a pocket dice, the alphabet letters are perfect for making a Roll & Write game. Simply choose the letters that you want your students to practice writing, place them in the pocket dice and give them a copy of the Roll & Write recording sheet. Students can rolls the dice over and over while writing down the letter that they land on each time. Make it festive by using colorful red, pink and purple markers. If you don’t have a pocket dice, that’s okay! Put the letter cards of your choice in a draw pile or inside a bag to reach into and grab. This is a fun and engaging way to practice writing.

Don’t put the letter cards away yet!! The Say, Build & Write mat can be used with the letter cards in a draw pile or bag. Students can reach into the pile, grab a letter and place it on the mat. The mat will prompt them to say the name of the letter, say the sound of the letter, build the letter with manipulatives, and write the letter. You can decide to use these mats over and over by placing them in a page protector and using dry erase markers or copy them for single use to really focus on your letter of choice. The manipulatives that work well with this activity are mini erases, flat glass marbles, small cubes, or even playdough.

The last Valentine’s Day alphabet activity that I want to show you is the Find and Clip mats. These mats are designed to help preschoolers practice identifying and naming letters of the alphabet as well as strengthen fine motor skills. You can use these mats with or without the alphabet cards. If you choose to use the alphabet cards, you can present them face down in a draw pile. Have your students pick a letter card and clip the matching letter on the Find & Clip Mat. If you have the alphabet clips from Target, you can choose to just use those without the cards. It’s up to you!

I hope you were able to get some inspiration from this Valentine’s Day Alphabet Activities post. If you are interested in the activities highlighted in this post, click the icon below to visit my TpT shop.

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Valentine’s Day Monster Activities for Preschool FREE Printable

February 13, 2023February 1, 2024 Lauren Johnson

Valentine’s Day is fast approaching!! If you are in need of some Valentine’s Day activities for your plans, you have come to the right place. In this post, I will share some monster puzzles, ABC monster games, as well as a fun Valentine’s Day monster FREEBIE to help your preschoolers order the letters in their name, identify letters, and identify letter sounds.

Preschoolers absolutely love learning the letters and spelling of their own names. Here’s a look at the Valentine’s monster name puzzles. These puzzles are editable so that you can add the names of your own students with templates that support names with 2 – 15 letters. You can also use these puzzles to practice counting, ordering letters, spelling vocabulary words and sight words, if you so choose.

There are several ways to use these name puzzles. I prefer to print them in color, laminate them, and add a magnet to the back of each piece. This makes the pieces easier to manipulate on a magnetic surface. A cookie tin from the Dollar Store is an easy way to display the pieces with plenty of room to arrange the puzzle. If you choose not to laminate the pieces for reuse, your students can glue the pieces in order on a sheet of construction paper.

Black and white versions of each template are available with this resource if you prefer not to or don’t have access to colored ink. You preschoolers can color their own name puzzles, cut out the pieces, order them and glue. This approach would incorporate some very important fine motor skills as well.

You can have your preschoolers go on their own “Love Hunt” with the Love Monster Alphabet search and find activity. With this activity, you can display the alphabet cards and tuck the 10 monster cards underneath 10 different alphabet cards at random without letting the students see. Your little learners can take turns naming each letter then peek underneath to see if they find a monster. This can be cooperative or competitive, it’s up to you!

If you would like your preschoolers to keep track of where the monsters are found, there are two alphabet mat variations to use. Students can cover up the colored hearts with counters or monster erasers with the colored version. If you prefer black and white, have your students color or dot the letters where the monsters are found.

You can also use the Love Monster Alphabet Mats with search and find sensory bins or alphabet hunts around the room. I set up a sensory bin with our 1 inch tiles for Lillian to find and match the letters. You could also use the letter cards and “hide” them around the room. Have students walk around and color in each alphabet heart as they find the corresponding letter. These Love Monster Alphabet Mats are available for FREE in my shop. The link to this freebie is at the bottom of this post.

Update: I found these amazing little heart shaped containers at Walmart and had to grab them for this activity!! They are just the right size to fit the 1 inch letter tiles that I like to use with this Search and Find Activity. They would also fit alphabet erasers or letter beads if you prefer to use those. I simply put one letter tile in each heart and hid the hearts in a sensory tray full of black beans. They added task of opening the little containers is not only super fun and engaging, it is any way to build those fine motor skills which is exactly what preschoolers need before they learn to write.

The last Love Monster activity I designed for Valentine’s Day is a set of Love Monster Alphabet Puzzles. This activity includes a set of 26, four piece puzzles. Each puzzle represents a different letter of the alphabet with a piece for the uppercase letter a piece for the lowercase letter and two pieces for a picture that begins with that letter. My favorite way to put these puzzles together is cooperatively in a small group. Because all 26 puzzles at once can be cumbersome, I prefer to choose 10 – 12 letters to focus on for the game and only use those pieces. Once I’ve selected the pieces I want to use, I mix them up and create a draw pile. Each player takes a turn drawing a card and placing it on the table. If the card goes with another card that has been played, it gets placed with that puzzle. If it begins a new puzzle, it gets placed in an empty space on the table. Your students can work together adding pieces until all the puzzles are complete. The Love Monster picture on each puzzle provides an opportunity for your students to self correct as they go.

That’s it! I had a lot of fun creating and preparing these fun Valentine’s Day activities for preschool and kindergarten. I hope that you are inspired by them as you plan a fun Valentine’s week for your little learners!

If you would like all the fun Valentine’s Day Monster activities, including the FREE alphabet mat, you can find them in my shop by clicking the icons below.

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Valentine’s Day Activities for Preschoolers FREE

February 12, 2022 Lauren Johnson

Valentine’s Day is almost here!! I want to give you all a quick overview of the activities we did to celebrate. Don’t forget to read through the whole post because I’ve got the FREE heart craft template ready for you to download and the link to the FREE Heart Alphabet Match. Take a look!!

Play Dough invitations-to-play are always so fun. I love how by switching out the cutters, colors and loose parts, you essentially set up the same activity over and over but it feels brand new. These play dough stations are also so fun for a range of ages. My 2 and 5 year old were both engaged for a significant amount of time.

Our loose parts were all things that I had already in the house. Acrylic table scatter from craft and party stores is a favorite loose part to include. Emmett, my 5 year old, actually found an acrylic maple leaf in the playdough, hidden from the last time he had a loose parts tray. We also had Valentine’s Day gems that I probably bought on clearance after Valentine’s Day last year. Other items to include could be colored straws, beads, or Valentine’s Day string necklaces cut up into different lengths.

Sensory bins!!! I did the sensory bins a little differently this time. This was actually the first time I tried dyeing the rice beforehand. I usually set up my bins at the last minute and forget to leave time for the dyeing process. This time, I set aside some time to buckle down and do it and it was so easy!! I used a 1 cup rice to 1 TSP vinegar ratio and just experimented with the dye. The first batch of rice was just different concentrations of red dye. The second batch I mixed in different shades of pink and purple. The last batch I left plain so that I could reuse it for another theme. The kids loved it!

We had a friend over to play during our Valentine’s Day activity time so I decided to make 3 separate sensory bins. Having one bin for each preschooler worked out so well. These bins are from the Dollar Tree so it didn’t cost me much to set up. All the other items in the sensory bins I’ve collected over the years from Michaels, Dollar Tree and Hobby Lobby. Table scatter, plastic heart containers, felt hearts and large pom poms filled our sensory bins.

Of course, we can’t celebrate Valentine’s Day without a little artwork. I decided to create a couple of large heart stencils and have the kiddos use cotton balls to dab paint into a heart shape. To set this up, I printed out the hearts (you can download the FREE template below) and cut the heart out of the middle of the page without cutting through the outside edge. This created the heart template. Then I lined the heart template up on top of a blank piece of white cardstock and taped these in a stack to the table with painters tape.

Next, I poured pink, purple and red tempera paint onto a paper plate and set up “dabbers” made out of clothespins and cotton balls. I loved watching the kiddos work so meticulously on their masterpieces. Emmett worked very carefully to fill his whole heart template up with every color. He dabbed his paint on evenly and thoughtfully. Lillian, my 2 year old, was so excited to paint, she dabbed all over everywhere! At one point, she got ahold of the jar of purple paint and began dumping it onto her paper! Her template did end up leaking because it got so saturated with paint, so just make sure to tell your preschoolers not to use too much paint or else it will run.

Our finished products! Can you tell which one is Lillian’s?? You could easily add words to this artwork and make it a Valentine or a parent gift. I decided to leave it as is because I like the simplicity of the heart on white paper. I love how we all did the same activity, yet none of the finished products look alike. I’m sure a whole class’ worth of stenciled hearts would make an adorable bulletin board.

If you would like to download the heart template to use with the Painted Stenciled Hearts activity, press the button below.

Download heart template here

Our last activity of the morning was a Heart Letter Match. Alphabet games activities are essential to preschool, but sometimes the number of pieces in an alphabet match game can be cumbersome! I decided to add magnets to the back of the puzzle pieces and have the kids spread them out across our whiteboard. This kept all the pieces in place and allowed the preschoolers to easily see all the pieces at once.

The matching aspect of the game was really geared towards Emmett. He didn’t become interested in learning his letters until just this year and he has a few left to learn. Emmett was excited to manipulate the pieces on the white board.

As he found matches and lined them up together to make whole hearts, we took turns saying the letter names and letter sounds. I was able to see which letters he is still confusing and which ones he still needs to learn.

Emmett was so proud of himself when all the matches were made! Towards the end of the game, he even told me to stop taking my turns so he could finish them all. I left the puzzle pieces on display for the remainder of the week for the kids to take apart and do again. Lillian even practiced naming a few!

If you would like to grab this FREE Alphabet Heart match game, click the icon below.