Do your little learners need help developing fine motor skills? Add this quick seasonal Valentine fine motor activity to your lesson plans to make learning fun! The best thing about this fine motor activity is that it only takes a few minutes to set up.
Your kids will be having fun while strengthening their fine motor skills, developing one-to-one correspondence, and even pre-reading skills with this simple activity!
Valentine Fine Motor Activity Purpose
This is a great fine motor activity to develop the small muscles in your student’s hands. Your kids will be exercising the hand muscles when they use tongs and tweezers to pick up the pom-poms.
Using tweezers and tongs provides your kids with opportunities to develop hand strength and control, which are important pre-writing skills. They’ll also use these same muscles for self-help skills like zipping, buttoning, and snapping.
Check out this research-based, playful learning unit in our curriculum shop!
The Ultimate Valentine’s Day Lesson Plan Bundle
20 of our most popular Valentine's Day resources, including math, literacy, and fine motor activities! Make learning hands-on and fun!
Setting up the activity in different ways can build other important skills such as left to right directionality. When you invite children to move the pom-poms from left to right and top to bottom they’ll be practicing important pre-reading skills – we read from left to right. Practicing left to right progression helps develop muscle memory in the eyes and hands, and trains the brain to think in these directions.
Valentine Fine Motor Supplies
- Tongs or Tweezers
- Silicone heart-shaped mold, muffin tin, or ice cube tray
- Small bowls or other containers
- Colorful pompoms, foam hearts, conversation hearts and/or heart table scatter
Valentine Fine Motor Activity Set Up
Fill a bowl or other container with small items to be transferred. The items are listed above in order of difficulty. Pompoms are the easiest item to pick up while heart table scatter is the most challenging.
Place the bowl and the silicone heart mold on a work surface. Placing the bowl on the left of the heart mold will set up the activity for children to transfer the items from left to right (that pre-reading practice).
If going from left to right is too difficult, just placing one item in each space is perfect for practicing one-to-one correspondence skills!
Valentine Fine Motor Activity
Invite children to use tongs or tweezers to transfer Valentine-themed items from the bowl into the heart shapes. Practice filling the tray from left to right and top to bottom. (Younger children may want to fill the tray randomly; allow them to make this choice.) Once the tray is full, move the bowl on the right and have the child transfer the items back into the bowl.
To extend the activity begin with tongs and pompoms. Once finished, invite the children to do the activity again using tweezers or one of the more challenging items. Keep the activity fun and not frustrating. This should be about play and learning!
If smaller items or tweezers prove difficult, move back to the other items. Practicing this Valentine fine motor transfer activity develops fine motor skills and builds a strong foundation for reading while having fun!
More Fine Motor Activities For Preschool
There are so many activities for developing those fine motor skills all year around. When it’s springtime, have your students engage in one of these Spring themed fine motor activities.
When it gets warmer outside, this ice cream themed fine motor activity that connects to the book, The Little Icecream Truck. Another great summer themed fine motor activity is this firefly jar fine motor activity. Students will read a book on fireflies and then create their own firefly jar while working on developing fine motor skills.
During Easter, your students can enjoy one of these Easter fine motor activities! During the month of October, your students might enjoy one of these Halloween fine motor activities!
And for any time of year, this clothespin fine motor activity your students will absolutely love!
All of the activities mentioned are a great way to encourage gripping, pinching, and manipulating small objects develop these skills; these skills are important for writing, buttoning, zipping, tying, cutting, and using tools.
More Valentine’s Day Ideas
Valentine’s Cookie Decorating Sequencing
This cookie decorating activity is perfect for helping young children learn how to sequence. You can use this Valentine’s Day Cookie Decorating activity at home or in your preschool classroom for a Valentine’s Day party.
To have the printable cookie sequence sheet emailed to you, simply fill out the form below.
