Valentine’s Day Chocolates Fine Motor Sorting Activity

Valentine’s Day and chocolate make for a sweet combination! To help celebrate this holiday, we put together a hands-on chocolate box activity that’s sure to be a hit. This Valentine’s Day box of “chocolates” activity is versatile for many ages. Toddlers can work on fine motor skills while also sorting and transferring. For an added challenge for preschoolers and young elementary aged children, you may focus on one-to-one correspondence, counting, and basic addition and subtraction.

Valentine’s Day Chocolates Fine Motor Sorting Activity

FIND EVEN MORE VALENTINE’S DAY ACTIVITIES IN OUR PRINTABLE LESSON PLANS

ABOUT  VALENTINE’S DAY AND HEARTS.

Materials for Valentine’s Day Box of “Chocolates”

• Assorted brown pom-poms: We used three shades of brown to represent white chocolate, milk chocolate, and dark chocolate.
• Kid friendly fine motor tweezers: We love this Helping Hands Fine Motor Tool Set (Find more of our top picks for fine motor tools here.)
• Empty heart shaped chocolate boxes: We used a large box for all chocolates and three smaller ones for sorting.

Getting Started

To set up this activity, place the assorted shades of brown “chocolate” pom-poms in a small container. Next, introduce the fine motor tools and help select age appropriate ones for children. Our toddler wasn’t quite ready for the manipulation of the scissor scoopers, so she was given one of the tweezers. If you do not have any fine motor tools on hand, using those little fingers as pincers work just as well! This would also be an excellent time to explore the empty boxes of chocolates and discuss filling up the boxes.

Play and Explore!

This activity can be set up as guided learning for little learners or as independent exploration and play for older ones. As toddlers grab each chocolate, have them transfer and drop them into the large heart shaped box. Just watch those fine motor muscles flex!

Continue to allow toddlers to grab and transfer until the box is full. You can continue the fun and learning by sorting the chocolates by “flavor” into the small boxes. Using the three smaller boxes, little ones can fill them up with white, milk, and dark chocolates.

If your little learner is ready to count small quantities, you can help them practice one-to-one correspondence by counting how many are in each box.

Our preschoolers and kindergartners enjoyed transferring and filling the chocolate boxes too! They took their learning and play to another level, pretending to have their very own chocolate shop. Lots of fun conversations ensued as they prepared the chocolates for delivery to customers!

See it in Action

Extending Learning

To further extend this activity for older children, ask them to count the total number of chocolates. You may also help them to write a simple addition or subtraction sentence. For example, you may prompt them to represent the total number of white chocolates and dark chocolates. Or you may ask them how many more milk chocolates than white chocolates they have. Of course, the “chocolates” can serve as fun hands-on manipulatives!

PRINTABLE VALENTINE’S DAY ACTIVITIES & LESSON PLANS

Save time and get right to the playful learning with our printable lesson plan sets. Each set includes over 30 playful learning activities related to the theme, and we’ve provided different versions for home preschool families and classroom teachers so all activities are geared directly toward your needs.

VALENTINE’S DAY THEME

GET YOUR VALENTINE’S DAY THEME LESSON PLANS

Also available on Teachers Pay Teachers.

HEART THEME

Learn about healthy hearts, symmetry and more in this week-long lesson plan set full of hands-on math, reading, & science learning activities for a preschool heart theme that’s perfect for Valentine’s Day. Watch this short video to see just a few examples of the types of activities and printables included in this set:

GET YOUR HEART THEME LESSON PLANS

Also available on Teachers Pay Teachers.

LEARN MORE ABOUT FINE MOTOR SKILLS