10 Valentine’s Tot Trays
Why is it when holiday’s seem close together that it is hard to transition from one to the other? In January I thought about Valentine’s activities, but have not gotten them all out till last week or printed until today! I did spend an entire afternoon searching our back porch for my Valentine’s stuff, with the help of my sister, to find them sitting on a high shelf!
Lil’ Red has been enjoying these trays. Some he will do over and over. Other’s he will appease me with a one time completion. Today Princess was home and helping engage him. When he got done with a few he shouted, ” Yah, I won the game. I did it!” Made me smile and so glad that he did his schoolwork without complaining or difficulty! Time to up his trays I think to more difficult/preschool learning.
Yes, Spiderman did make an appearance last week during Tot School!
1. Paint Palette with chopsticks and spikey pom-poms- I know that I bought the pom-poms and paint palette at Jo-Ann’s. The chopstick were bought last year to help celebrate Chinese New Year from the grocery store. It has a “helper” rubber piece that attaches the chopsticks together to make them more like giant tweezers.
2. Valentine’s Playdough with various Heart Cookie Cutters- Made the playdough awhile ago and it’s almost gone. Time to make more I guess! Heart cookie cutters have been bought at various stores on clearance over the past decade! I spent as little as .10 to as much as .50 a piece.
3. Heart Ice Cube Tray with Plastic Hearts and a Coffee Scoop- The ice cube tray I have owned for a very long time (before Eldest was born)! The plastic hearts were recently bought at the Dollar Tree and the coffee scoop is an old one from Tupperware. A melon baller would be good for this as well.
4. Sticky Heart Art- I used clear contact paper, fancy heart cookie cutter and sharpie marker to set this up. I traced the heart cookie cutter to have a definite shape to cut out once decorated. I let the kids tear up tissue paper and then added confetti and glitter to the tray. I used magnets to help hold the sticky sheet down until enough art stuff was on it to keep it flat. You can use another sticky sheet or cut out heart and place on the front of a card.
5. Upper Case Letter Match with Water Bottle Lids- The printable came from Making Learning Fun! I enlarged the sheet by 104% twice in order to get the circles big enough to fit the water bottle lids without being squished. I was quite amazed that Lil’ Red got almost all of them correct the first go round. We definitely will be doing more letter matching in the future.
6. Valentine’s I Spy Bottle- We made this last year by looking all over our house and at grandma’s. We search button boxes, scrapbook bins, and misc bead containers. A few cupid confetti’s were also thrown in. I did not make a picture to seek and find the items, but we may dump the contents out to make it more challenging.
7. Plastic Heart Drop into Parmesan Container- We have found empty Parmesan cheese containers to come in handy for lots of tot activities. Same plastic hearts from the Dollar Tree. Your child can use his fingers, scoop, or tongs to transfer them from a container or bowl into the larger slot in the top of the Parmesan cheese container. We counted them as we dropped them in.
8. Spikey Pom-Pom Tweezer or Finger Drop- these are tiny little pom-poms bought at Jo-ann’s a few years ago. They fit in this smaller Parmesan Cheese Container with a single hole perfectly. Lil’ Red had been using the tweezers but gave up wanting to get them in there faster.
9. Magnetic Pom-Poms with Bingo Dauber Printable- This H is for Hearts Printable was found on Making Learning Fun. (Great place to find all sorts of things.) The pom-pom are the average thumb sized or 1″ pom-poms with self-adhesive magnets stuck on the back. Great to use on metal trays!
10. Bracelet Color Sort or Match with Heart tins- The Heart pans were bought a long time ago. They have been used to bake cakes and make candles. Now they are tot school items. We only used red and green cause that is the color of paper I could find. Now I have tons of acid-free scrapboook paper but no regular pink paper to be found! The bracelets were bought on clearance from Jo-Ann or Walmart last year. I do not know if they have them this year or not. I have stayed away from the store so I would not buy anything impulsively at full price!
I hope these Valentine’s Tot Tray have given you some ideas or inspiration for your little one! Take a look around your house, cupboards, grandma’s house,etc. You might be surprise by what trays you find to use!
New to the idea of Tot Trays? Then please check out some other posts: Tot Trays (The Basics) or Fall Tot Trays.
Do you TOT SCHOOL? Have you used Tot Trays?
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More Valentine’s Day Activities:
Baby School Valentines Sensory Bottles
10 Valentine’s Themed Tot Trays for Preschool
Valentine’s Day Fine Motor Activities
Great ideas for Valentine’s Day, Thaleia! The photo with the Spider Man mask made me laugh! 🙂 Thanks so much for linking up with Montessori Monday. I pinned your post to my Kids’ Valentine’s Day Activities Board at http://pinterest.com/debchitwood/kids-valentine-s-day-activities/
Nice! We have those same red hearts in our class and the kids LOVE them!
Thank you for putting together such great tray ideas. I tried to do a few Valentine ideas with my boys and they wern’t interested. I may try out a few of your ideas next year!
Thanks for linking up with Tender Moments. Can’t wait to see what you have for next week.
Becky,
Give it time. Try a variety of things. Maybe a new tweezers or tong. maybe pouring or scooping. Maybe you or a bigger kid needs to find excitement in it:) My bug kids are sometimes more initially interested than Lil’ Red is:)
Seemi,
My sister bought them and let us use them. We cannot seem to find them at any of our Dollar Trees:( Will keep looking just in case.
Deb,
Thanks for your support! I know lots of mom’s who just need that little bit of inspiration to try something new with their tot!
What a fun collection of activities for toddlers! I love it!
Thanks for sharing.
xoxo
I love your chop stick and pom pom activity. So great for developing fine motor skills.
Neat ideas! I don’t do tot trays, but I have been needing something to do with our colored rice, so I’m going to make it into an I Spy bottle! Thanks! 🙂
I love the chopstick helper piece that came in a set from Kroger. You can adjust the tension on the chopsticks depending on grasp development.
We go back and forth with tray work. Just depends on how much planning I do or brainstorming or ideas from pinterest:)
Very cute ideas! No more tots in our house but I sure do miss those fun little activities!
It’s hard to think of ideas sometimes even with tots in the house:)
I love the “I Spy” bottle! My kids love the ones at the doctor’s office.
Thanks for visiting and connecting with us on Good Tips Tuesday http://www.sherrylwilson.com/good-tips-tuesday-4/
What a great list of Valentine’s Day tray ideas! I am always looking for new tray ideas for my little boys. Thanks for sharing!
These trays look like a lot of fun for the kids!
Thank you for stopping by the Thoughtful Spot Weekly Blog Hop this week. We hope to see you drop by our neck of the woods next week!
Lovely Valentine’s day learning ideas for tiny tots! It’s more fun to learn masked, right? 🙂 Thank you for linking on We Love Weekends! Stop by tomorrow to link up for upcoming weekend!
Thanks for sharing at Funtastic Friday!
These are awesome ideas – they look so fun! Thanks for sharing on the Faith Filled Parenting Linkup!
Thank you for sharing with us at Brag About It this week! Pinning and tweeting to share!
These are great activities. Thanks for linking up to #justanotherlinky xx
LOVE tot trays! I haven’t heard them called that before, but I always loved these kinds of activities even in the kindergarten class where I taught… love the fine motor aspects too!
Thanks for sharing at #FridayFrivolity – pinning and tweeting!
Great ideas! Thanks for sharing! I just started tot school with my little one.