Montessori-Inspired Valentine Activities with Spielgaben {Free Printables}

I’ve always loved preparing valentine activities. Today, I’m sharing some fun Montessori-inspired valentine activities I prepared using Spielgaben educational toys and free printables I found online.

This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf of Spielgaben. All opinions are honest and my own. This post also contains affiliate links (at no cost to you).

In case you’re not familiar with Spielgaben toys, they are exceptionally high-quality educational toys designed for ages 3-12. You can see from the photo that the cabinet is very high quality and fits in well in a room with traditional Montessori materials. I love the new, easily removable drawers in version 4. The yarn balls from the 1st Spielgaben set can be used with babies and toddlers, too.

The Spielgaben complete set comes with over 700 pages of full-color printed learning materials. These printed materials help you as a parent or teacher easily use Spielgaben toys educationally with your child and/or students.

Spielgaben Materials Used in This Post

For this post, I used the Spielgaben wooden sticks from set 8. (If you’d like the wooden sticks from the earlier Spielgaben versions, Spielgaben will sell them to you at minimal cost to go along with version 4.) With the wooden sticks, I used the wooden semi-rings from set 9. I also used the wooden dots (points) from set 10 and the wooden parquetry tablets from set 7.

In this post, I’ll link to free printables which will help make the activities simple to prepare yet attractive. I’ll also tell you where I found the materials for my activities.

Heart Counting and Fine-Motor Activity

For this activity, I used the free Heart Counting Do-a-Dot Printable from Gift of Curiosity with the page sizing for printing set to custom size scale 40%. I used a medium-size tray from Montessori Services. To focus on fine-motor skills, I added Quick Sticks, which I love and use for many activities. A strawberry huller or tweezers would work well, too. Younger children could place the dots with their fingertips. I used the exact number of dots needed as a control of error.

Valentine Pattern Block Trays

This free heart pattern block printable is from Making Learning Fun. I used a large plastic tray from Montessori Services and a heart-shaped bowl from the grocery store, a craft store, or the Dollar Tree (I don’t remember which).

You’ll find two free Valentine’s Pattern Blocks Activities at Playdough to Plato. I substituted four red squares for the orange ones in the letter “I” to have enough squares.

Small/Medium/Large Heart-Building Activity

For this tray, I used the free small/medium/large cards from the Valentine’s Day Printable Pack ~Preschool Version at Homeschool Creations. Depending on the child’s age and skill level, you could show the child how to make a heart from semi-rings and sticks or simply give him or her the challenge of creating hearts with the materials. Again, I used the exact number of pieces needed as a control of error.

I used a Montessori Services rug for the layout.

Heart Hundred Chart Art

I really love hundred chart art activities. I just think it’s a lot of fun to discover the picture, and I appreciate that the work extends the Montessori hundred board. This activity uses the free heart hundred chart from Lil’ Country Librarian. I used the same printable for a different valentine activity in this post: Montessori-Inspired Valentine Math Trays. Here, the page sizing for printing is set to custom size scale 60%. The original printable uses red and pink while there are only Spielgaben dots in valentine colors of red and white. So I glued a small piece of cardstock over the words “red” and “pink” and punched out red and white label dots to identify the colors needed. I didn’t use the control chart because of the colors, but I added the exact number of dots needed to the tray as a control of error.

I didn’t add a transferring tool because of the number of dots needed. Also, using fingertips to transfer the dots is a great fine-motor activity. It requires coordination to properly place each dot in exactly the correct position.

UPDATE:

All My Spielgaben Posts

Many of these include links to free printables! (Click on an image to go to the related blog post. The gallery is ordered according to publication date with my latest post at the top.)

Version 4 of Spielgaben Educational Toys 

I highly recommend Spielgaben as an amazing educational material for home or school. Even though the toys aren’t inexpensive, they’re definitely worth the price because of the high quality of materials and number of years your children or students can use them.

Special deal for my readers!