Tuesday, January 21, 2020

Valentine Crafts for Montessori Preschoolers

Valentine craft - Hill Point Montessori

For Montessori preschool parents, Valentine’s Day is a great opportunity to explore different crafting activities while also practicing multiple developmental skills. No matter the age of your preschooler, Valentine crafts are a fun way to practice hand-eye coordination, prewriting skills, and creativity - and you don’t need a lot of materials to create something beautiful.

Valentine Cards

For children, celebrating Valentine’s Day is all about Valentine’s Day cards. Of course, there is also a little candy in the mix as with any holiday, but the cards make the difference for this February celebration. So naturally, making Valentine cards is the ideal craft and art activity and one that can encourage all kinds of creative expression and other skill development for preschoolers. Paper crafts like card making require very few supplies and help to hone fine motor skills and build the muscles they will soon learn to use in writing by having them hold and use paintbrushes, glue sticks, and crayons or markers. Additionally, it introduces another important Montessori and life practice: expressing feelings and taking time to reflect on and appreciate relationships.

Heart Chains

Like card making, this heart chain project is a paper craft that requires very few materials - just colored paper, scissors, and a glue stick. If you want your preschooler to practice using a pencil and tracing, you can also include heart stencils. But if you want to practice more free-form scissor use, you just need to fold a paper in half, demonstrate cutting from the crease in the paper to make the simple shape of the half-heart, and then unfolding to reveal the whole heart shape. Together, you can make hearts of different colors and different sizes and then glue them together so they slightly overlap and create a chain. This activity creates a great decoration for your home and can also lead to a simple math lesson about the difference in sizes and shapes among the hearts.

Love Letters

Though composing a letter is something your child won’t learn how to do until they are in Montessori elementary school, they can still practice some of their language skills with this activity. To make “love letters” with your preschooler, you can use the Montessori sandpaper letters to get your child thinking about things they love and the letter of the alphabet those things start with from A to Z. As you work together to brainstorm their favorite, most-loved things, they can trace the letter of the alphabet on a piece of paper and paint or draw a depiction of the things they most enjoy that start with that letter. This can be an activity spread over multiple days. Additionally, since this craft makes a visual representation of the things they love according to the letter they start with, you can compile the illustrations in a booklet. Next time you work on the alphabet use it alongside the sandpaper letters to practice and discuss the things and people in their life that make the “love it” list.