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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