After you have made all those Valentine’s Day crafts it’s time to get moving as all the holiday sugar kicks in. This Valentine’s Day movement activity is an easy one to do in your own living room with minimal prep work and almost zero equipment.
While this day of love has a heavy focus on treats and cute crafts, I love to have a few movement games up my sleeve for when the crafting wears out and the sugar kicks in.
This Valentine’s Day movement activity uses the premise of one of our favorite easy games to play inside, the Color and Shape Movement Game.
Instead of squares and triangles, this love-themed version uses hearts, x’s, o’s, and roses. It makes for a holiday special and fun spin on a family classic.
Skills Learned
What I love about this Valentine’s Day movement activity is that you can adjust the skills being learned to accommodate your child’s age and stage. Some of the skills you may be practicing depending on your child are:
- Shape recognition
- Color recognition
- Multi step directions
- Body awareness
- Body movements like balance and changing directions
- Speech
- Creativity and imaginative play
How To Play
There are so many ways to play this game! I talk all about different game variations with this one printable in this post. You will also get all kinds of ideas in the first two pages of your free printable.
To play the original game:
- Spread the shapes on the floor around the room.
- Have a “start” point where you and your child stand.
- Call out a color and shape combination for your child to find and stand on. For instance: red heart, pink o, white flower/rose.
- After your child has found and stood on that shape, have her come back to the start point before calling out the next one to find.
After you have played the original way for a bit, switch it up and move into one of the other versions. For instance:
- Find just the shape or just the color
- Move from shape to shape rather than coming back to the start point.
- Change how you move to each shape – crawl, skip, roll, hop, etc.
- Do something specific on the shape – hop on it with one foot, sit on it, twirl on it, etc.
- Trace the shape with your finger or “draw” the same shape in the air.
- Move all the shapes to a new spot.
- Let your child put out the shapes and call out ones for you to find! Kids just adore this role reversal and watching you get in on the game too.
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Included With Your Download
- With your download, you receive:
- 4 shapes: heart, rose, x’s, o’s
- All shapes come in 4 colors – red, pink, purple, white
- 1 set of shapes in block colors
- 1 set of shapes in outline color with the color word written inside. This is a great way to save some printer ink and practice reading skills.
Supplies Needed
You can certainly use some cardstock or construction paper to cut out your own shapes, but if you opt for the printable route, you need:
- 8 pieces of cardstock (16 if you print both types of shapes – both the block colors and outline color versions)
- Scissors
- Sheet protector to store your shapes for future play.
- Optional: A small storage bin to hold all your Valentine’s Day decorations and reusable activities for next year.
Normally, I recommend laminating your printables to use again and again, but in this case I do not suggest it. Laminating will cause the shapes to become slippery on carpets and hard floors. Since kids (and you!) are going to be walking on them, I don’t want anyone to get hurt!
With this Valentine’s Day movement activity, you and your little loved one are going to make some sweet and special memories together. It is such a simple way to make Valentine’s Day to feel a little extra unique for the kids too and not just the adults.
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Printables from moveplaygo.com are for personal and classroom use only.