Let’s face it, the heart candy and chocolates are already in the stores and children are already anticipating the consumption of all the sweet treats they are going get. Some children have even begun to plan their Valentine’s gifts and handouts for their friends and family. Add these heart crafts to your Valentine’s Day occupational therapy activities!
One of our newest heart crafts is this free Valentine’s Day Hat Template. Kids can color, cut, and assemble the heart hat in OT sessions, in the classroom, or at home. This printable heart hat makes a great craft during February, but it doubles as a skill-builder: Use it to work on fine motor skills, hand strength, scissor skills, eye-hand coordination, executive functioning skills, and more.
Heart Crafts for Occupational Therapy
Whether it is a pink, red, or purple heart, OT practitioners simply love crafts that incorporate a variety of skills and give the flexibility for each step to be modified, so as to upgrade or downgrade as needed, to allow all children to engage in the craft making process while achieving some level of success.
You’ll find heart craft creations that range from easy to more complex, making them accessible by younger or novice learners that have fewer hand skills, or more advanced learners that need more skill advancement and require increased time to complete.
There are numerous enjoyable heart craft ideas in this post. If you need something sweet to jazz up your therapy session, classroom, or at-home theme, this post is right where you need to be. Read on and get ideas that don’t include tasty sweets, but do include all the sweetness of the Valentines holiday!
Wearable Heart Crafts:
These fun, festive heart crafts can include wearable jewelry, ornaments, or provide a source of Valentine’s Day gifts. They will encourage separation of the two sides of the hand, in-hand manipulation, precision grasp, and arch development, making them purposeful and productive.
- Valentine’s Day Hat Craft– This color, cut, and paste craft is a fun one for the whole caseload!
- Heart Keychain Craft– Make a batch of salt dough and create a heart keychain. This is a great multi-step activity for learners to develop executive functioning skills.
- Heart Necklace Craft | Glue Sticks & Gumdrops
- Pipe Cleaner Heart Rings | One Little Project
- Valentine’s Friendship Necklace | Creative Child
- Heart-shaped Friendship Bracelet | Make and Takes
- 3 Minute DIY Heart Bracelet | Craft Your Happiness
- Heart Friendship Bracelet | Mom’s Crafters
Paper Crafts:
These paper crafts include folding, painting, cutting, pasting, weaving, and writing.
All of these actions will help your learner of most any age and skill level to work on bilateral hand use, eye-hand coordination, scissor grasp, hand dominance, delicate touch, grasp patterns, and visual motor skills.
- Valentine Window Clings Craft | The OT Toolbox
- Make a hot chocolate craft decorated with hearts!
- Valentine’s Day Sparkle Craft | The OT Toolbox
- Heart Maze– This is a fun maze activity that doubles as heart art! Work on those visual perceptual skills and fine motor skills.
- Easy Origami Hearts | Gathering Beauty
- Paper Plate Heart Suncatchers | Kids Craft Room
- Washi Tape Heart Craft | Kids Activities Blog
- Raining Heart Cloud Craft | Glued to My Crafts
- Easy Mosaic Heart Craft and Tissue Paper Heart | Crafts on Sea
- Valentine Heart Mat Craft | The Resourceful Mama
- Heart Collage Craft | There’s Just One Mommy
- Q-Tip Painted Heart Craft | Projects with Kids
- Paper Weaving Heart Craft | Turn This Into That
Foam Crafts:
These foam crafts are not only cute, but they help learners develop skills such as proper scissor grasp, cutting skills, rotational manipulation, sequencing, and precision skills.
Once complete, some provide a functional use in the end – a bookmark!
- Craft Foam Valentine Dinosaur | Glued to My Crafts
- DIY Rainbow Heart Stamps | hello, Wonderful
- Loveworm Bookmark | Activity Village.co.uk
- Craft Stick Love Bugs | Sunshine Whispers
Cardboard Heart Crafts:
Cardboard is a material that develops hand strength, pincer grasp, bilateral coordination, hand dominance, stability, and eye-hand coordination. Some of the crafts listed will provide opportunity for lacing, wrapping, poking, cutting, and tearing, all of which give hand skill development a real challenge.
These fun cardboard crafts will allow focus on a variety of skills while being highly engaging and rewarding.
- Valentine Door Banner | The OT Toolbox
- Cardboard Lacing Hearts | Our Kid Things
- Cardboard Heart Craft | Twitchetts
- Yarn Wrapped Hearts Craft | Easy Peasy and Fun
- Yarn Craft Heart | Blue Bear Wood
- Yarn Wrapped Hearts Craft | The Pinterested Parent
Food inspired Heart Crafts:
While these food inspired heart crafts, do use food as a medium, these festive food crafts will include only decorations and a few ideas for a way to feed the birds.
Learners will work on building precision grasp, gross grasp, bilateral coordination, and eye hand coordination skills.
- Valentine’s Day Garland Noodle Craft | The OT Toolbox
- Grain Heart Craft | The Pinterested Parent
- Fruit Loop Heart Bird Feeder | Sweet and Simple Living
- Heart Shaped Bird Seed Crafts | Made with Happy
- Valentine’s Candy Heart | Easy Crafts 101
- Bean Heart Craft | Blessing Overflowing
Tin Foil Crafts:
These tin foil crafts are unique in appearance, but also help build maker grasp, fine motor control, and tool pressure. If the child tears off their own piece of foil from the roll and wraps the foil themselves, they will also be working on bilateral coordination and touch pressure.
Older or more advanced learners can be presented with the opportunity to use a glue gun (always use caution with these as even the cold glue guns get hot at the tip). Learners can display their own creativity with these crafts.
- Tin Foil Heart Craft | iHeart Crafty Things
- Tin Foil Embossing | The Pinterested Parent
Printable Heart Crafts
In The Valentine’s Day Kit offered by the OT Toolbox, you will find printable heart activities and craft materials. Just download, print, and start building skills. This pack is a great tool for developing a variety of fine motor skills for Valentine’s day or all year round!
We hope you enjoyed all of the crafts included in this round-up of ideas and that you have found exactly what you are looking for to help the learners in your life enjoy Valentines day and celebrate the LOVE of this season!
Regina Parsons-Allen is a school-based certified occupational therapy assistant. She has a pediatrics practice area of emphasis from the NBCOT. She graduated from the OTA program at Caldwell Community College and Technical Institute in Hudson, North Carolina with an A.A.S degree in occupational therapy assistant. She has been practicing occupational therapy in the same school district for 20 years. She loves her children, husband, OT, working with children and teaching Sunday school. She is passionate about engaging, empowering, and enabling children to reach their maximum potential in ALL of their occupations as well assuring them that God loves them!
