6 Valentine Themed Learning Journal Activities
Valentine's Day is the perfect time to sprinkle some love and creativity into your child's learning journey! Have you tried a learning journal yet? Whether you're working with toddlers, preschoolers, kindergartners, or all of the above, themed journal activities are a great way to make early literacy and math skills engaging and fun. Learning journals provide hands-on learning opportunities AND the chance to document your child's progress and creativity.
If learning journals are a new concept for you, and you are interested in learning more about what they are and how to get started, start here!
In this post, I’m sharing six easy-to-set-up, Valentine-inspired activities that focus on building essential skills while fostering one-on-one connection. From counting and patterns, to fine motor skills and letter recognition, these ideas are designed to captivate young learners and create lasting memories.
Before you can start a learning journal, the first thing you need is a GOOD blank sketchbook. A good blank sketchbook is the kind that has nice, thick pages that won’t allow all your child’s hard work to bleed onto the next several pages. This is our all-time favorite as it’s affordable, slightly bigger than normal printer paper, and the pages are a perfect thickness.
Now let’s dive into the love-filled fun!
1. Love Bug Spots
This learning journal activity is great for toddlers ranging from age 18 months - 3 years old. Draw a large heart-shaped lady bug (these are my favorite markers for creating learning journal activities), with small black hearts in place of dots. Toddlers will peel black dot stickers and place them over each heart. This activity works on building fine motor skills, spatial awareness and placement, and also builds vocabulary by talking through the process with their caregiver (that’s you)!
2. Find and Heart the Letters
For this activity, you’ll need a small heart-shaped cookie cutter, and some washable tempera paint. I just put the paint on a small paper plate to keep things nice and simple. Use a black sharpie to write out your toddler or preschooler’s name at the top of the page using either all uppercase letters or with the first letter uppercase and the rest lowercase (depending on age and what letters you’re working on them recognizing).
Write the coordinating letters around the journal page, and mix in some other letters that are not in their name. Have children dip their heart-shaped cookie cutter into the red paint and then stamp the heart around only the letters they recognize from their name. They can name the letter each time they stamp it.
This activity is great for ages 2-4, and works on letter recognition, spatial awareness/placement, and building vocabulary.
3. Love Bug Patterns
Here is another activity that would be great for preschoolers and even kindergartners. You can choose to make the patterns as simple or complex as you need. Use a black sharpie to draw a heart-shaped face for your little love bug caterpillars. Use heart-shaped stickers to start a pattern horizontally from left to right by each face.
Children can peel and stick the stickers horizontally from left to right to continue and complete each different pattern. Talk about how patterns REPEAT and the colors take turns over and over and over. Peeling and placing stickers is a great way to work on building fine motor skills and spatial awareness, and being able to recognize and continue a pattern is something that will not only benefit your child in their math skills but literacy as well!
4. Secret Love Letters
Have you tried crayon resist art yet? It’s so magical! You’ll need a regular white crayon (NOT washable - apparently there’s such thing as “washable” crayons and they don’t work as well with this type of activity), some watercolor paints, and a black sharpie (regular black marker might bleed with watercolors).
Start by drawing rows of hearts using the sharpie, and then use the white crayon to write a letter inside each heart. One of the most important parts of crayon resist art, is making sure that you push down firmly with the crayon, and go over it 3-4 times. You’ll want to push hard enough and/or go over each letter enough times that you can see some of the wax residue when you look closely.
Have your preschooler or kindergartner choose a different color for each heart, and paint inside it using their watercolor paints (this watercolor paint set is our all-time favorite and works great for this type of activity)! They should see a letter revealed within each heart as they paint, which they can name and maybe even say the sound it makes.
This activity is great for ages 3-5 and works on letter recognition, spatial awareness, fine motor skills, and building vocabulary.
5. Love Note Number Match
Love Note Number Match is a perfect activity for pre-k/kindergartners or children ages 4-6! You’ll need a set of dominoes for this one (this is our favorite set!) and some markers to draw the “love notes.” You’ll write a number 1-12 on each envelope and then have children count the number of dots on each domino and place it over the envelope with the matching number.
“Subitizing” is a math skill that means children can look at a number of dots (like on a die or on something like dominoes), and know how many dots there are without needing to count each individual dot. Playing games or doing activities that require rolling and counting dots on dice, or identifying the number of dots on dominoes can help improve this skill.
If children are still needing to count the dots individually, then this is great practice for one-to-one correspondence (associating one number with each dot), and of course is also great for working on number recognition.
6. CVC Love Notes
These mini envelopes are one of my favorite materials to use for valentine themed learning journal activities! I stick them onto the pages using a piece of double-sided tape, and they make for such a fun and interactive learning tool.
This activity is also great for ages 4-6, or children who have mastered all letter sounds and are ready to start segmenting and blending them to read words. You’ll need some valentine-colored construction paper to cut some hearts from, and you’ll write CVC (consonant, vowel, consonant) words on each one. For a full list of CVC words and word families, check out my FREE Master Word List!
Children can read the word on each heart and then sort it into the envelope with the correct word family written on it (ex: “bug” would go in the envelope that says “-ug”) - when they are finished sorting, you can have them take the hearts out of each envelope to re-read all of the rhyming words.
If you liked these ideas and want to see more ideas and/or see them in action, be sure to check out my Instagram for all my latest content!
If you would like to have access to over 200 learning journal activity ideas organized by age group AND by season, PLUS my growing library of printable activities, you can check out my Digital Learning Journal Membership below!
A "learning journal" is a blank sketchbook that is used to hand draw & personalize learning activities for your child based on different developmental skills. This membership makes your learning journal experience a breeze by providing you with a digital toddler, preschool, kindergarten, & early elementary aged journal activity guide. The 4 guides are organized by developmentally appropriate, seasonal & non-seasonal activities, & are frequently updated with new ideas.
