preschool Valentines theme light table

Last Updated on February 19, 2022 by Sheryl Cooper

Inside: Put together a preschool Valentine theme light table with hearts and pom poms. Little hands will love transporting pieces, providing fine motor strengthening!

The light table is a perfect place to explore color and texture, while also boosting fine motor skills.

For the Valentine’s Day theme we’ve put together heart cups, heart trays, rattan hearts, pom poms, and more that toddlers and preschoolers love.

So much hands-on exploration taking place in one space!

One of our activities during free-choice centers time is the light table.

I’m often asked the brand of our current light table, and sadly I can no longer find it. However, we have used one similar to this and loved it.

While I have varied what we’ve placed on this table, I’ve found that my preschoolers prefer loose parts for more open play.

The children love moving the pieces around, stacking them, placing them inside trays and containers, transferring them with fine motor tools.

As with many toddler preschool activities, the more open-ended, the more the children can add their own ideas while exploring.

We didn’t have a light table until many years after I started teaching. We first discovered them while touring some other facilities and waited patiently until we had enough fundraising money to purchase one. At that time, each of the classrooms had to share one light table, taking turns on who got to use it.

Finally, over the course of many years, we were able to provide a light table for each classroom and it’s now a staple during all of our centers times.

Benefits of the Light Table

There are many benefits of using a light table, including:

Fine motor
Hand-eye coordination
Sensory
Color recognition

You can add even more depending on what you put on your light table. For example, if you provide translucent shape blocks, you can work on shape recognition. If you provide numbers along with small objects, you can work on number recognition and counting skills.

I also love the light table because it provides a small space for a couple of children to work together. I often witness conversations while objects are being passed back and forth, or while children are collaborating to build something together.

Preschool Valentine Theme Light Table

What we used:

Heart trays
Red small bucket
Small utensil for transferring pieces
Rattan hearts
Silicone heart baking cups
Pink and red cellophane paper
Pink and red pom poms
Pink and red heart gems

Feel free to add/substitute depending on what you have!

While rummaging around our storage closet looking for light table items, I like to think of different textures, adding some sense of touch to the activity.

The only thing I needed to purchase from the above list was the rattan hearts. Well, NEED is a strong word. But I wanted them. How’s that? 🤪

The Invitation to Play with the Preschool Valentine Theme Light Table

Once your children are at the light table, watch what they do with the pieces! The above photo was taken after a couple of my little friends had been playing there. I love how they placed the rattan hearts in the silicone heart cups. A fun way to work on 1:1 correspondence!

And, of course, they loved filling the red bucket. That is always a hit with this age group!

As for the pom poms … well, I confess that I have a thing about them. I love using pom poms with so many activities!

Here’s just a few:

Pom Pom Hearts

Flower Garden Sensory Bin

Pom Pom Apple Sensory Bin

And if you want an entire collection, I’ve got you covered:

Pom Pom Learning Activities

Pom poms are great for little hands. And they come in a variety of sizes and colors, so you can coordinate them with so many different activities.

They’re also quiet. And we teachers appreciate that, right?

And if they happen to get tossed across the room, they won’t hurt anything. (Not that we ever had that happen … nope!)

And see those silicone heart cups?

I purchased them four years ago and have used them in multiple ways, such as when we made Valentine brownies, when we squirted water into them (fine motor!), and they are a lot of fun at the play dough table.