Valentine Number Sense Activity

Valentine’s is in full swing over here! We have decorated, crafted, played and eaten our fair share of Valentine themed everything, and we still have a week to go. I know people say it gets all “Hallmarky” but you won’t find me pouting on folks wanting to celebrate LOVE. Let’s do it every day! And let’s do it in February! And let’s do it on the 14th! Spread the LOVE. 

The afternoons are the hardest time of day for me. As a stay at home mom it seems the three-ish hours from the end of nap time until when dad comes home are the longest. Especially, when it is cold and or raining. I try to think ahead and have some type of activity to do with the big kids and this always helps pass the time. Seeing as we are doing all things hearts, the other day I threw together a fun heart and number sense activity. And you can too!

All you need is some paper, a marker, dice & stickers. I changed things up a little bit between my four and two year old, but the game was played the same. 

For my two year old I drew a bunch of hearts and wrote numbers 1 – 6 inside them. I wanted him to work on number sense, both recognizing digits and being able to do one – to – one correspondence counting the dots on the dice. 

For my four year old, we are working on reading. So, inside her hearts I wrote number words 1 – 6. I wanted her to work on reading the number words as well as recognizing the number of dots on the dice without having to count the dots. 

Here are what their papers looked like before we started.

Then they took turns rolling the dice and placing stickers on their paper, covering up the number digit or word they rolled. I thought this activity might be one and done, but they both asked to play again. Chickadee immediately and Sprout after he played trains for a little while! I love when activities can be fun for both of them and challenge them at their current ability levels! You could also extend this having your older kids roll two dice and adding them together. The numbers on the hearts could then be numbers 2 – 12!

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