HEART SEQUENCES:
Use your sorting hearts and divide the hearts between you and your child.
Take turns placing different coloured and sized hearts in a pattern.
Let your child copy your pattern.
Make this more difficult by letting your child look at the pattern for ten seconds then covering it up. S/he must now copy your pattern from memory.
Grade this game by using only a few hearts initially and gradually adding more hearts.
HEART TARGET GAME:
Cut some large hearts out of red or pink construction paper and scatter them around the room. Blow up balloons without knotting, and give them to your children to "set off" into the air - seeing if they can land any on a heart target. If you have more than one child playing, the winner is the child whose balloon lands closest to a target! For older kids you could number the targets and get them to keep score.
HEART BASKETBALL:
Cut a heart-shaped frame out of corrugated cardboard, paint it red or pink, and either suspend it from a doorway or prop it up diagonally between a chair and a wall - you might need to improvise! The children then try to bat their balloons through the heart to score a point.
VALENTINE BALLOON POP:
Pour a small amount of Valentine confetti into your balloons before inflating them and tying off. Give the children a pin and ask them to keep the balloons in the air until your signal, at which point they can start trying to pop them! You could also put a small piece of paper with a heart drawn on it into one or two balloons - and whoever retrieves those wins a prize.
WRAPPING A PRESENT:
This is a variation of the popular Halloween mummy game, but instead of wrapping a mummy, the kids are wrapping up a present for Valentine's Day! Give each pair of kids a roll of pink toilet paper and on your signal one of them wraps the other up. The team that finishes first gets to put a big red bow on their present!
CUPID SAYS:
This is a variation of “simon says”.
HEART NUMBER MATCH GAME:
Let your child colour in the numbered hearts provided and then cut them out.
Glue the dotted set of hearts randomly onto the inside of a file folder.
Decorate with stickers or other decorations if you like.
If you can laminate the other numbered set of hearts.
Let your child count the dots on the file folder hearts and find the matching numbered heart, placing it on top