Valentine’s Day Snap Cube Mats

Do your kids love snap cubes? I don’t know what it is about these little squares of plastic, but the excitement that fills the room when I bring them out is like no other. We have used snap cubes to help with alphabet, numbers, and even CVC words! No matter what the activity, they are a hit every time. The cubes themselves make what we are learning exciting and that alone is motivating for kids! These Valentine’s Day Snap Cube Mats are helpful for motivating kids to strengthen fine motor skills, counting and more.

Learning About Fine Motor Skills

Valentine activities for preschoolers

Providing little fingers opportunities to move and flex prepares them for writing, tying shoes, and cutting with scissors. These Valentine’s day fine motor activities give our kiddos an adorable and hands on way to work those little digits.

Fine motor skills are important to coordinate the little muscles in their fingers and wrists with eye coordination. Practicing these skills will help hands and fingers do daily tasks that are expected of most children.

Along with moving little fingers, these valentines fine motor activities also help develop counting, sorting and phonics skills.

These lovely Valentine’s day activities for preschool can be used in a math center, in small group instruction, and one-on-one with your little love bug.

In addition to learning about fine motor skills for preschool here are some more ideas for what you can teach with the Valentine Snap Cube Mats :

• Identifying letters and letter sounds
• Sorting and classifying colors
• Counting
• More and less

Valentine Snap Cube Picture Mats

Why Is It Important For Kids To Do _______?

Besides the fact that kids love arts and crafts projects, there are so many other reasons you should do art and craft activities with your child.

Please note: These mats do require 2 sets of snap cubes because some mats use 20 of a color.

How To Use The Valentine’s Day Snap Cube Mats

vALENTINES dAY FINE MOTOR ACTIVITIES FOR PRESCHOOLERS

This is another one of my favorite types of activities. Once you prep it once, you are prepped for life. You can use it over and over. On demand even!

The first step to getting this activity ready is to print out each of the mats. There are ten all together. The designs are all Valentine’s Day related including a chocolate dipped strawberry, diamond ring, various hearts, flower and more! What a great way to celebrate Valentine’s day!

These can be printed back to back if you are prepping for your home. If you are prepping for a classroom, I would suggest doing each one on a separate page. These are the perfect preschool valentine fine motor activities.

The next step is to protect the sheets. Depending on the activity, I either laminate or use a dry erase pouch. If you plan to use these mats over and over, laminating might be the best idea. If you aren’t sure, dry erase pouches are my favorite.

Grab your snap cubes and get ready to play!

The first step to playing can be to trace the letter with a dry erase marker.

The letter on each mat is the first letter of the word written and the picture.

The next step is to fill in the picture by snapping together the cubes. If you are using the Math Link Cubes, you can have children place them on the corresponding colored square. The squares of the picture are color coordinated. Use the cubes to create the picture.

When the picture is formed, the next step is to sort or count the colors. An easier way to sort and count is to pull the snap cubes off of the picture. Sort them by color, then count each cube for the first color. Write that on the space provided on the bottom of the mat. Move on to the next color and so on.
A more challenging way would be to count the cubes of each color while on the mat and write them in the designated areas.

Repeat the process with each picture and mat.

Other Ways To Use The Fine Motor Activity For Valentine’s Day: