5 Family Activities to Help You Connect – Valentine’s Edition
Looking for a few ways to add extra fun (with very little effort) into your family’s Valentine’s Day celebration this year?
Look no further! These 5 ideas will help awaken your inner Cupid!
1. Dancing Candy Hearts Science Experiment: All you need to set up this experiment is a bag of candy conversation hearts and some antacid tablets. (Adult supervision is required, of course!) Simply place an antacid tablet in a cup, add a cup of water, and then pour in some candy hearts. Watch as the chemical reaction causes carbon dioxide bubbles to form and attach to the candies making them “dance” by floating to the surface and then sinking when the bubbles pop.
2. “Love Letters” Tracing: Adding a tactile sensory component to literacy development helps children to activate neurological pathways that otherwise do not get accessed when simply sounding out or writing letters with pencil and paper. Plus, it’s more fun! For Valentine’s Day try writing “love letters” like “h” is for heart, “c” is for Cupid, “v” is for valentine, and “l” is for love.
3. “Pave a Road to My Heart” Sensory Play: Using a bin of pink or red dyed rice (watch a tutorial HERE: https://youtu.be/9B-XvSaKPJ8?si=tDDYBDeErhKkWGy1) in a large, shallow bin, a start heart and an end heart, and providing a cup of white rice, invite your little love to “pave a road to your heart” by pouring the white rice from the start heart to the end heart. Provide a toy vehicle so they can drive on the road once they’ve paved it. Once they’ve done this they will most likely want to scoop and pour and play with the rice. Offer any tools you happen to have on hand to increase the interest- spoons, bowls, tongs, etc!
4. Make a “Hearty” Meal: This one might be obvious, but we thought we might give you a few ideas from our “hearty” menu to get your gears turning!
5. Pipette Water Painting: All you need to set this one up is a pipette or medicine dropper (or even one of those baby nose suckers if you clean it out really well first!), cotton rounds (cotton balls or coffee filters would work too), and few drops of red food dye in water! Make a heart shape with the cotton rounds on a cookie sheet, model for the child how to squeeze the dropper, and invite them to paint the heart red!
We hope these family friendly Valentine activities have helped to kick the season off for you!
Happy Valentine’s Day!