Valentine's Day Activities for Toddlers

Before you became a parent, Valentine’s Day was all about romance and roses. Now that you have children, you get to expand the holiday to your little loves–and trust us, it can mean a lot of fun!

Once your kids become toddlers, Valentine’s Day can become a really special day full of family traditions. Here are a few ideas:

Serve all red, pink and white foods.
It doesn’t need to be sugary fare full of artificial dyes. If you want to keep it healthy, think strawberry smoothies, fruit kabobs, white cheese slices cut into hearts, and more.

Teach them about love and friendship.
Make the day an opportunity to teach your little ones about kindness and how to express our love to others. You can talk about what it means to be a good friend, and work together on an act of kindness for a neighbor or relative.

Make valentines.
Help your toddler craft cards for the people they love. This can be as big or small as you like. You might want to break out the finger paints and glitter glue, or keep it more simple with store-bought cards.

Play some heartfelt games.
It’s easy to create your own Valentine’s Day game for your toddler! Here are a couple of options.

Hearts Sorter
Fill a few shoeboxes with a variety of construction paper hearts in different colors and sizes. You can have your child sort the hearts according to size or color.

Memory Hearts
Do you remember playing Concentration as a child? It’s an easy game to replicate. Take 20 index cards, glue colored hearts with two of each Valentine message like, “I Love You,” “You’re sweet”, etc. You’ll want 10 pairs of cards when you’re done. Put the cards heart-side down and take turns turning over two cards to find matches. If you don’t get a match, return the cards, and let the next player pick two cards.

Read Valentine books.
You might buy some special new books for the day or head to the library with your toddler to read some holiday books. Some family favorites include Love from The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Llama Llama I Love You, and Happy Valentine’s Day, Mouse!

What are your Valentine’s Day plans for the family? If you’re interested in having one of our photographers take some special photos of your little loves, visit our website to learn more about our Bella Life packages.