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You are here: Home / Valentines / Fun Preschool Valentine’s Activity Using Marbles and Doily Hearts

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Fun Preschool Valentine’s Activity Using Marbles and Doily Hearts

February 10, 2017 by Sheryl Cooper

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Inside: Add some action to your preschool Valentine’s activity by moving marbles across doily hearts, making paint tracks. Fun action art that even the busiest kids love!

Another holiday is coming up! And there are so many cookie cutter crafts available. But whenever I can squeeze in some child-directed process art, I do. This marble Valentine heart activity for preschoolers is all process art, and yet because it’s in the shape of a heart, it fits right in with Valentine’s Day.

I am often asked what’s the difference between teacher-directed and child-directed. It comes down to this: if you can hand them the materials and let them do their own thing, it’s child-directed. If you are sitting right there, guiding them every step of the way, it’s teacher-directed.

This is definitely child-directed!

preschool valentine's art

Make sure to check out these other Valentine’s Day process art activities:

  • Hearts Painted by Cars
  • Valentine’s Bags
  • Heart Prints

Fun Preschool Valentine’s Activity Using Marbles and Doily Hearts

What you will need:

Paper doily hearts

Marbles

Red tempera paint

Something to transfer the marbles to the heart, such as bug tongs

A box lid

Setting it up:

Pour some paint into a bowl. Add the marbles and bug tongs. (Or whatever you choose to use for transferring the marbles.)

Place a paper doily heart inside the box lid.

Marble Valentine Heart Activity

Invite your preschooler to transfer the marbles from the bowl to the box lid.

Marble Valentine Heart Activity
Marble Valentine Heart Activity

Hold on to the sides of the box lid and tip it back and forth to move the marbles. This takes some upper body coordination as the preschoolers figure out how much tipping is needed to move the marbles around.

Marble Valentine Heart Activity

If you want a bigger challenge, use a larger box lid. More thought will be needed to figure out how to get the marbles to get to the paper heart, not just the box lid.

Marble Valentine Heart Activity

Busy children especially love this activity because of the motion involved. They don’t even need to sit. Move the chairs away from the table and let them stand. They actually might use more of their body this way, too.

Marble Valentine Heart Activity

This is also a good activity for those with low motor tone. It uses the fingers, hands, arms and shoulders.

I love this photo because it shows how much we reuse our box lids! You can see several different colors of paint plus glitter from previous paint rolling activities.

Marble Valentine Heart Activity

How to adapt this for younger children: 

We’ve used sensory balls and golf balls. I suggest starting with the sensory balls since they are larger and lighter, and then move to the golf balls.

CLICK HERE to find more toddler Valentine’s Day art activities!

Marble Valentine Heart Activity

 


And make sure to pop over to our Valentine’s Day pin board!

preschool valentine's art


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Filed Under: Art, preschool, Valentines, Winter Activities Tagged With: art, preschool, process art, Valentines

About Sheryl Cooper

Sheryl Cooper is the founder of Teaching 2 and 3 Year Olds, a website full of activities for toddlers and preschoolers. She has been teaching this age group for over 20 years and loves to share her passion with teachers, parents, grandparents, and anyone with young children in their lives.

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Comments

  1. Kate Lloyd

    February 6, 2014 at 2:50 am

    These are so beautiful and it’s hard to believe that such young children made them. I will be sure to do this one with my 2 year old. Thanks for sharing Sheryl, I’ll be posting this on my FB page soon. 🙂

    • Sheryl Cooper

      February 8, 2014 at 3:49 am

      Thank you, Kate! Yep, 100% made by 2 year olds. It took a bit of coordination to learn how to hold the box lid in both hands and gently tip it to and from, but once they got the hang of it, they handled it fine!

  2. Sheena Tomlinson

    February 10, 2014 at 3:54 am

    How fun, what a great craft!

    • Sheryl Cooper

      February 10, 2014 at 11:52 pm

      Thank you, Sheena!

  3. Carrie

    February 15, 2014 at 12:08 am

    What fun and I love how they came out! Thank you for sharing at Sharing Saturday!

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