Valentine’s Day Tracing Activities for Preschoolers
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One of the important skills preschoolers need to develop is their fine motor skills. To do this, we have to provide them with a lot of different activities designed to help them accomplish this goal. That is why I designed these FREE Valentine’s Day Tracing activities, that will also make a nice addition to your Valentine’s Day theme during the month of February.
This freebie includes six pages with different tracing activities, and you can grab it at the end of this post.
Importance of Developing Fine Motor Skills
The development of fine motor skills in preschoolers is essential for them to learn how to write. When they learn how to control their pencil grasp and trace lines with a little more precision, they are acquiring the ability to trace the lines that form the different letters and numbers, which will give them the necessary base that will later transform into writing.
Activities to Develop Fine Motor Skills
Fine Motor activities include any time of activity that will help preschoolers develop strength in the muscles on their fingers and hands. These activities include lacing, cutting, pasting, painting, coloring, inserting beads in pipe cleaners, coloring, painting, using their fingers to trace in the sand, using clothespins and tweezers to grab something, using stamps and stickers, scrunching and ripping paper, using droppers, using pegboards, and doing puzzles, just to mention some of them.
These are some of my favorite toys to help children develop those muscles.
Valentine’s Day Tracing Activities
These low-prep activities just need a handful of materials, which will keep your budget very light, and most probably you already have some around the classroom. These include the free Valentine’s Day Tracing Activities (found at the end of this post), dry-erase pouches, and dry-erase markers. This way you can reuse them multiple times. Another idea is to print them on white cardstock and laminate them. Just choose the alternative that you think will be more useful in your particular case.
Now, if you are like me and want to make it more fun and give your children variety and choices, you can add Valentine’s Day writing materials and manipulatives to the mix. The good news is that most of them can be stored for next year.
Another Uses For These Activities
You don’t have to limit the possibilities to just tracing the lines. You can also use these tracing sheets in many ways, taking into consideration the different levels of development of your preschoolers’ skills. Some of the ideas I can give you are:
Finger Tracing
Have your preschoolers trace the lines with their fingers. That will give them a sense of how the lines go. Don’t forget to tell them to go from left to right, since that is the correct direction to write.
Grasping
Have them grasp a pom-pom with a clothespin, and have them “trace” the lines using the pom-pom. This particular activity will have them working more on their fine motor skills because it will force them to use their pincer grasp, which is essential to learn how to grasp a pencil correctly.
Stamping
Children love this particular and simple activity. Give them some small stampers, to be used following the direction of the lines. The children will be especially interested if you provide Valentine’s Day stampers. Remember that changing the materials, toys, and routine a little bit will keep them interested.
Pasting
The use of stickers is also great to work on those fine motor skills because when children peel and paste stickers they are getting the opportunity to work on those finger muscles and concentration. Give your children some Valentine’s Day stickers for an extra kick, to paste along the lines.
Marking
If you are using an unlaminated sheet of paper, you can have them use crayons, pencils, or regular markers to trace the lines. If you laminate them or place them inside a dry-erase sleeve, then have your preschooler use a dry–erase marker to trace the lines. This last activity also gives them an extra opportunity to work on their pre-writing skills, because you can tell them to use their fingers to erase the lines and retrace them.
Using Small Manipulatives
Remember that it is important to offer variety and choices to help your preschoolers develop their fine motor skills, and using small manipulatives is a great way to do it.
There are many Valentine’s Day-related small manipulatives that you can add to your writing and manipulative centers, to switch things around and keep them interesting. Some of them are bottoms, mini erasers, sequins, bingo chips, or gems. Present the tracing sheets and the small manipulatives to your children, and simply invite them to choose one type and place objects along the lines, to practice those fine motor skills. To make sure your children are successful in this particular activity give them an unlaminated sheet of paper, without the dry erase sleeve. Otherwise, it will be too slippery, which could cause frustration in your children, something you definitely don’t want.
Using Playdough
The use of playdough is a great fine motor activity, and it is so fun, that the children feel excited and happy about it. To continue with the theme at hand, add red, white, and pink playdough to your centers and invite your preschoolers to roll fine snakes with it, and place them on top of the strips to form the lines as they go.
Valentine’s Day Story Books
If you know me, you will know that I always encourage everybody to use storybooks every chance they get. Remember that reading and writing go together, and children cannot properly learn one without the other. These are some great Valentine’s Day books:
You will never have too many activities to offer your children. The more you add or change with the different themes, the more you will keep them engaged, helping them develop the necessary skills they will need to create a solid foundation for their future reading and writing development in Kindergarten.
Just remember to use every opportunity to give them plenty of variety and choices, for their different levels of skills and interests, and most importantly, have fun while doing it. The children will pick up on your excitement and it will give them the extra encouragement to keep them engaged.
For that purpose, you might use these activities with the other Valentine’s Day theme-related activities with free printables I also created for you to use. Just check them out at the end of the post.
As promised, your freebie is below. I hope you find it useful. Just enter your email address in the box to confirm your subscription, and the pdf file will open instantly for you to print and save. If you are currently a subscriber, you won’t be subscribed twice.
If you don’t have the time right now, just pin it to one of your Pinterest boards for later.
Be happy, safe, and creative. I wish you well.
Love,
P.D. Please let me know if you like any of these ideas worked for you, or if you think I need to add or replace something. My goal is to help you in any way I can and I don’t like anything better than to post something that you might find useful. Also, if you came up with different ideas and want to share them, I will love to post them as well.
