Valentines Day Games For Preschoolers
If you are planning a Valentine's Day party for children, games are essential.
Here are some games appropriate for the preschool crowd.
Preschool-age children love to fish. You can create a fishing game with small
toy fishing poles and hearts (as fish). Use an empty plastic tub as your "lake"
and put into it red hearts cut out of construction paper or cardstock. Each
heart is good for a prize. One might be good for a Hershey's kiss, or other
small candy, another might be for a small plastic heart. Put magnets on the
cardstock hearts and a magnet on the fishing pole. Then the kids can "fish" for
hearts and win a prize at the same time. Each child should only be allowed to
"catch" one fish each.
Preschoolers love balloons and you can create a heart target for them to aim
their balloons at. Create a target out of cardboard or heavy cardstock and put
it on the floor somewhere. You might want to have several targets on the floor.
Give the kids balloons that have been blown up but aren't tied shut. Let them
let go of the balloons in the direction of the target and see where their
balloon lands. Be forewarned: kids will want to play this over and over again.
So either have plenty of balloons ready to go (perhaps held closed with a
clothespin) or have plenty of adults around who want to blow up balloon after
balloon. You can also play a similar game by putting a heart target into a box
or laundry basket and having the children try to hit the target with an inflated
balloon. Be sure to provide prizes for everyone!
Preschool age children love a good game of "Duck Duck Goose" or "Simon Says".
For Valentine's Day, you can put a twist on these classic games. Have the kids
play a game of "Cupid, Cupid, Love" instead of "Duck, Duck, Goose" or have them
play "Cupid Says" instead of "Simon Says". Be sure to add a smooch at the end of
each order in "Cupid Says" or have the kids incorporate Valentine's Day
activities, like "Cupid says, give your neighbor a hug".
This is a game young children love. Have them "throw smiles" at each other. Sit
them in a circle and show them how the game will work. Only one person in the
group will smile first. He or she will smile wildly and widely for the whole
group. The rest of the group will not smile, not even a little tiny smirk. Once
the smiling person is done, they will literally "wipe" the smile off their face
and pass it to the next person in the group, who will repeat the wide smile and
hope nobody laughs. The kids that laugh or smile are out of the game (those who
should be stone-faced anyway). The game can continue until only one stone-faced
person is left. Be sure to provide every child with a fun prize just for trying.
Preschool teachers might want to encourage creative thinking with a little game
of "Valentine's 20 questions". The teacher can have a visual in mind, which
might be a heart, or Cupid, or a card or something relative to the holiday. The
teacher says "I'm thinking...:" and the children must ask questions about what
the teacher is thinking. The teacher can give tiny clues along the way
especially if he or she is losing the interest of the younger children in the
group. Whoever figures out what the teacher is thinking can be the next one to
begin the next round of 20 questions. Be sure to ask the child what they are
thinking before the next round begins or it could go on longer than it needs to!
Children love "pin the tale on the donkey" so why not "pin the heart on Cupid"?
In this game, simply provide each child with a big red heart with his or her
name on it. Have a big cutout of Cupid on a wall and blindfold each child, spin
him or her around and have them stick their heart on Cupid (there should be
adhesive of some sort on the back of the heart). Once everyone has stuck their
hearts, let them look at where they ended up.