Incorporating Valentine’s Day is a fun way to make skill building more fun. This activity as we did it is for children familiar with letters and interested in how things are spelled. This is a stage some children enter into very young, like 3-4 or not until later like 6. That is why this is a great free choice activity, and I have a wonderful way to differentiate it for preschool as well. You can also use sight words if you are working on them. We just had fun duplicating the sayings on conversation hearts but feel free to adapt this to your specific learner’s needs.
Gather your materials. You will need some playdough, a heart cookie cutter, some letter stamps ( here is an affiliate link to my favorite ones –>here ), some paper or foam hearts, a tray, and a marker.
Start by deciding what to write on the little hearts. We chose to use the actual sayings from the popular Valentine’s Day candies.
For younger kiddos stick to single letters. Not only does this match their literacy level, but it also matches their stamina for the activity. Stamping out all these words takes time. Also for younger children only put out the stamps you need, and you may want to adjust how many hearts you have, six may be too much.
Using the playdough and cookie cutter make hearts!
Place the heart word on the tray
and have at it!
I love using stamps with playdough because if there is a flub up, it’s no biggie.
If you are doing this to practice spelling, simply omit the heart cards and call out the words for your child and have them stamp the hearts.
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Dena @ Batch of Books says
Cute idea! I have a toddler that would love this. 🙂