Celebrate Valentine’s Day with a heartfelt (pun-intended) Montessori activity with the little ones!
In this activity, Montessori Trainer Miss Zac takes you through a seriated hearts Montessori activity and flower heart children’s activity.
Access the free printable worksheets here to follow along the YouTube tutorial.
A Montessori Twist on Valentine’s Day
This activity draws inspiration from traditional Montessori materials, specifically the inscribed shapes work often found in the Sensorial curriculum. By incorporating heart shapes and colour gradation, this themed activity brings a playful and seasonal twist to a classic Montessori concept.
The seriated hearts activity is designed to help children refine their visual discrimination, ordering, and fine motor skills. Children are invited to arrange the hearts from largest to smallest and from darkest to lightest. This dual challenge encourages careful observation and thoughtful sequencing.
Getting Started with Seriated Hearts
To begin, lay out all the heart shapes in a mixed pile. Prompt your child to sort the hearts by size, starting with the largest and ending with the smallest. You may wish to model the first few steps, then encourage your child to continue independently. Sorting by size not only develops mathematical thinking but also prepares children for more advanced concepts like measurement and spatial awareness.
Once the hearts are ordered by size, introduce the concept of colour gradation. Invite your child to observe how the shades move from dark to light. This element of the activity enhances colour awareness and supports early art and design concepts.
Creating a Flower from the Hearts
After completing both sequences, Miss Zac demonstrates how the hearts can be transformed into a flower shape. Children can glue the hearts in a circular pattern, overlapping them slightly to resemble petals. This creative extension invites open-ended exploration and offers a beautiful end result that children can gift to a loved one or display proudly at home.
You might choose to turn the flower into a Valentine’s Day card. Simply glue the completed flower onto folded cardstock, and help your child add a short message inside. This gives the activity a meaningful purpose and adds a literacy component to the experience.
Supporting Independence and Practical Life Skills
This activity also supports important Practical Life skills. Children practise using scissors, glue, and careful hand movements to position the shapes. These tasks build hand strength, coordination, and independence.
For toddlers who may not be ready to complete the entire seriating process, you can simplify the activity. Try using only three hearts in contrasting sizes and colours to introduce the concept gently. Invite them to place the hearts in order or experiment with layering the shapes. This allows for participation at any developmental stage.
Language, Extension Ideas, and Display
To extend the learning further, consider introducing vocabulary such as “largest,” “smallest,” “dark,” “light,” and “in between.” Discussing these terms as your child works builds descriptive language and supports cognitive development.
You can also combine this activity with related books or songs about love, colours, or shapes to create a themed learning experience. Children benefit from making connections across different types of content, and seasonal activities like this one offer an excellent opportunity to do just that.
Finally, consider displaying your child’s finished flower in a visible space at home or in the classroom. Celebrating their work builds confidence and reinforces the value of their effort. You may even wish to revisit the activity with different shapes or colour sets throughout the year to reflect changing seasons or celebrations.
A Heartfelt Way to Celebrate
This Valentine’s Day, we hope the seriated hearts activity brings joy, learning, and creativity into your early learning environment. As with all Montessori-inspired activities, the goal is to encourage independence, concentration, and pride in completing meaningful work.