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Valentine’s Day is just around the corner!
This means love, friendship and hearts are in the air.
It is the perfect time to engage your toddler in fun learning activities, arts & crafts projects and hands-on experiences.
These 13 Valentine’s Day themed activities are easy, inexpensive, and encourage spending quality time with your toddler and, best of all, fun!
Bake A Sweet Treat
Baking with your toddler is always a fun hands-on activity to incorporate into your day. Between measuring ingredients and following a step-by-step recipe, baking teaches your toddler so many things! Most important, though, you are creating memories together. My two year old daughter loves helping Mommy and MomMom bake cookies, mix brownies or make Apple Cake.
There are many fun sweet treats you can make that are specific to Valentine’s Day. All you need are Heart-Shaped Cookie Cutters and a Heart-Shaped Cake Pan.
Funfetti Cupcakes – I found a Pillsbury Funfetti Cake Mix specific to Valentine’s Day at Target. This made me so happy because I know my daughter will enjoy mixing it together and eating the finished product. We plan to bake this together and share with our family throughout the week of Valentine’s Day. Using these Valentine’s Day Cupcake Liners and this special Funfetti Icing makes the finished product even more special.
Strawberry Cake – Pillsbury also has a Strawberry Cake Mix, which you can mix together and bake inside of a Heart-Shaped Cake Pan or turn into delicious cookies to share with friends and family.
Heart-Shaped Cookies – Using the Heart-Shaped Cookie Cutters, you can take ordinary sugar cookie dough and transform it into a fun Valentine’s Day treat. Decorate with red, pink and white sprinkles or chocolate candies like M&M’s to make the cookies extra-special.
Heart-Shaped Rice Krispie Treats or Brownies – You can even use the Heart-Shaped Cookie Cutters to create fun Rice Krispie Treats or Brownies. You can mix in red, pink and white sprinkles or M&M’s into the Rice Krispie Treats for pops of Valentine’s Day color.
Valentine’s Day Peppermint Bark – This easy and simple candy is the perfect sweet treat for Valentine’s Day. Plus, it is a great use of those leftover candy canes you accumulate at Christmastime. Crushing up the candy canes is a fun task for your little ones.
Play with Play Doh
We love Play Doh in our house! It is such a great sensory toy and creative activity for kids of all ages. I love to stock up on special cookie cutters at each holiday. You can find sets of them at the Dollar Store. We have a set of different-sized heart ones and using them with red, white and pink Play Doh is the perfect Valentine’s Day Sensory Activity for your toddler. It keeps their little hands busy. Plus, using different sized hearts builds vocabulary as you compare the hearts (bigger, biggest, smaller, smallest, largest, larger than, smaller than) and use words to describe the sizes (big, small, little, large). Once your toddler cuts out a few hearts, you can count them together.
Lacing Hearts
Building those fine motor skills is so important for toddlers because it helps strengthen the skills needed to write. Lacing activities are one way to build and strengthen your toddler’s fine motor skills.
Cut out different sized hearts from cardstock and punch holes around the edge. Take a piece of yarn (or a shoelace) with masking tape wrapped around the end and practice lacing it through the holes. The masking tape makes the end of the yarn easier to fish through each hole. The cardstock is sturdier than construction paper. You can even purchase a pack of large foam hearts and punch holes around the edge of them. These will last the longest and are least likely to rip.
Make Valentine’s Day Cards
We love making homemade cards in our house. My daughter enjoys decorating the cards with crayons, markers, paint and stickers. We make handmade cards for birthdays a lot and smaller holidays. You can check out the birthday cards we made for our friends with fall birthdays here.
I wrote a more detailed post about how to set up a craft station for making Valentine’s Day cards. Be sure to check it out and learn more about our favorite items to include in this craft station 😊
To make Valentine’s Day cards, cut pieces of construction paper (or card stock) in half and use each half to make a card. You can also buy a set of plain white cards. The Dollar Section at Target recently had packs of 8 plain white cards and envelopes so I stocked up on them for activities like this.
Your toddler can decorate the cards with Valentine’s Day stickers, heart stickers, and special stampers. Then, use crayons, markers or paint to further embellish the cards. Friends and family will love receiving these handmade cards from your toddler! We plan on making them for the grandparents and uncles.
Decorate the Windows
I love decorating my home for Valentine’s Day and involving my toddler in the process makes it more fun.
Let your toddler decorate the front door, a mirror, patio door or back door with Valentine’s Day window clings. The closet in our basement is a mirrored sliding door so we like to play with window clings on here.
Make A Valentine’s Day Wreath
Making a wreath for Valentine’s Day is a fun and easy craft project for your toddler. She will take pride in the finished product while it is hanging in your home.
All you need is a paper plate and some colored construction paper. First, cut out the middle circle of the paper plate, leaving you with a ring. After that, use Heart-Shaped Cookie Cutters to trace and cut out hearts. I like to use red, pink, and purple, but you can use any colors your toddler chooses. Next, assist your toddler while she glues the hearts onto the paper plate ring. We like to use these glue sticks because my daughter can see the glue being applied. Finally, punch a hole in the top of the Valentine’s Day Wreath, tying a piece of red yarn through the hole.
Hang the wreath in your home and watch your toddler glow with pride every time she sees it!
Read Valentine’s Day Books
Reading is a wonderful way to teach toddlers about a holiday. Reading with your toddler is such a positive activity that should be done every.single.day. You can read more about the benefits of reading to your child here. One of our favorite Valentine’s Day books to read is “Llama Llama I Love You”. There are so many great titles of Valentine’s Day books out there for toddlers. Checking them out at your local library is a wonderful way to enjoy them!
Print Out Valentine’s Day Coloring & Activity Sheets
There are so many free printable coloring and activity sheets out there. Just perform a Google search for “Valentine’s Day Coloring Sheets”. One of my favorite websites to print off coloring sheets for my daughter is Mom Junction. Here is a link to 45 Free Printable Valentine’s Day Coloring Pages for Your Little Ones. I like to print a few and put them together into a homemade coloring book for my daughter to enjoy during the month of February.
Put Together “Things I Love” Book
Take several sheets of white paper, fold in half and staple along the crease. Page through a magazine with your toddler and have her point out things she loves. These can include her favorite foods to eat, her favorite activities to do, her favorite animals and places to go. The possibilities really are endless! You can even print off pictures of these favorite things and have her glue them into her book. Then, spend time reading the book together by talking about the pictures.
Color Sorting
Color sorting is a popular toddler activity. You can make it specific to Valentine’s Day by focusing on the colors red, white and pink. Using foam heart stickers from the Dollar Store and three sheets of construction paper (red, white, pink), have your toddler put heart stickers on the matching colored paper.
Another fun color sorting activity is creating a “Cereal Sorting Mat” with colored hearts. Give your toddler a bowl of Fruit Loops (or Fruit Rounds if you are an Aldi shopper like us!). Work with your toddler as she sorts the cereal onto the matching color heart. This is a great activity to do after naptime because your toddler can eat the cereal as a special snack. You can download my Valentine’s Day Cereal Sorting Mat here.
Use Dot to Dot Markers or Stickers to Trace the Outline of A Heart
My daughter received these Dot to Dot Markers for her birthday and loves to use them. I am always looking for different activities we can do with them. This activity is perfect for Valentine’s Day!
Draw a heart on a piece of white poster board or craft paper. You can find poster board at the Dollar Store. Then have your toddler trace the outline of the heart with the Dot to Dot Markers or stickers. These large heart stickers work well for this activity. Peeling the stickers off the sheet help with fine motor skill practice.
Make Confetti Hearts
Cut up different colored pieces of paper into small squares. This activity is a great way to use up the paper you may have in a scrap pile. Cut out a heart from card stock. Give your toddler some colored pieces of paper and assist her as she glues them onto the heart. Check out this Instagram post to see our finished product.
Watch A Valentine’s Day Show or Movie
Our favorite movie to watch around Valentine’s Day is “Be My Valentine Charlie Brown”, but there are many other cute episodes of toddler-friendly shows that are centered around Valentine’s Day. Check out this article to see 12 Valentine’s Day Movies for Families & Kids.
These 13 activities are fun, easy and inexpensive ways to learn about and celebrate Valentine’s Day with your toddler. We enjoy creating memories together while participating in each activity and they become a special part of our day 😍
What are your favorite Valentine’s Day activities to do with your toddler? Share about your favorite way to learn about and celebrate Valentine’s Day with your children in the comments below!
I LOVE all of your ideas! You have the best toddler ideas and share so many great tips to have fun, learn, and build skills all at the same time! 🙂
Thank you so much for the comment Danielle! I love incorporating my teaching background into planning activities to do with my toddler. The activities break up our day and provide my daughter with some learning time 🙂
These are all great ideas. I read this before we went shopping just so I could get a few things to do with my son!
Thank you for the comment Lauren! I’m so glad to hear you found a few ideas to do with your son 🙂 I hope he enjoys them!
I love these ideas! I need to go buy the window clings, my son would love this. We have a ton of french doors and it could be a great distraction from electronics!!
Trish
That’s perfect!! I bet he will LOVE putting the window clings all over the french doors 🙂 I am always trying to distract my daughter from watching a Disney movie. You can find window clings at the Dollar Store, Walmart, and Target for a great price!
Awesome activities! I’m always looking for new things to do with my toddler in the house – and it’s great to have some new activities that are themed. I admit that I’ve let daycare lead the way with this holiday, so we’ll definitely have to try some this week!
Thank you Carly! Hopefully I gave you some ideas when you are stuck indoors this winter 🙂 My daughter is at home with me so the only themed activities she gets are the ones I plan! Sometimes when we go to the library for story time, there is a coloring page or short activity connected to the theme of books being read. But that doesn’t always happen!
I love this! There are so many awesome activities here that are great for toddlers. In my experience, toddlers love to be busy, regardless of the activity. I want to try and be the parent who has activities for the various holidays, and you’ve provided some great choices.
Toddlers are very busy individuals and keeping those little hands active is important! Engaging toddlers in a variety of hands-on activities helps prevent tantrums, teaches them valuable skills and is a great way to bond with your child. Plus, they are fun!