Valentine’s Day Fine Motor Activities

There is little doubt our techno kids need opportunities for hand strengthening and fine motor development.  Using special days and holidays can go a long way to engage our children in the very activities they need, without them realising we have a hidden agenda!  With this in mind, I wanted to share some fun Valentine’s Day fine motor activities for your children.  These activities cross the age divide and are suitable both as preschool Valentine fine motor activities as well as being suitable for our older children.

Valentine’s heart paper chains

There is something awesome about a cutting activity which magically reveals a line of joined cut outs!  These Valentine’s Day fine motor activities develop the foundation muscles for pencil grip and pencil control, while enthralling your children.  The fine motor skills include paper folding, as well as cutting skills.

Heart paper chain instructions

1. Cut your sheet in half on the dark cutting line.
2. Place your sheet face-down and lay it in the portrait orientation.
3. Fold up the lower edge of the page until the dotted folding line becomes visible.
4. Once the page has been adjusted so the folding line is straight, run your finger along the dotted line.
5. Once again, place the page face down and repeat the folding process.
6. Cut along the lines, ensuring right handers cut to the right-hand side, and lefties to the left.  If you are unsure about this, you can read more here.
7. Once you have completed the cutting, you can open up your heart paper chain!
8. Repeat this with the second piece, which can be joined onto the first to make a longer chain.

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Valentine’s day fine motor activities for pre-schoolers

This is a fantastic pre-writing activity for children who avoid writing utensils.  I stuck the paper cut-out hearts to the table with a glue stick and they came off without any trouble.  I realised once I had started I needed to be ensure all the edges of the hearts were stuck flat to prevent the sequins getting caught under the edges of the hearts.  My only other tip: don't set this activity up in the wind!  We ended up having to bring the table inside because the sequins started blowing off the table!

Preschool Valentine fine motor activities

This tweezer activity is going to challenge the pencil grip muscles!  The set-up is simple with foam hearts floating in a bowl of water.  We added large sequins for the sparkle factor, and purple sea animals to dive for.  We added a mirror to the bottom of the bowl to make it more visually appealing.  Depending on your age-group you can ring the changes with either Jumbo Tweezers or Gator Grabbers.

Encourage your children to hold the tweezers with the-three-friends® with the tuck-down-two® held loosely in the palm of the hand.  Not only will this develop the finger strength for pencil grip, but also the separation of the two sides of the hand.