Adding fun handwriting activities doesn’t need to be boring! This Valentine’s Day handwriting slide deck proves that. Here, you’ll find an interactive free Google slide deck that challenges visual perceptual skills in the form of a match-up type of game and a Valentine’s Day themed handwriting task. Use these occupational therapy slides in teletherapy activity planning or in hybrid/face-to-face lesson planning. Let’s get ready to help kids develop the skills needed for handwriting with hearts and love!
You’ll also love this Valentine’s Day gross motor slide deck for occupational therapy and physical therapy teletherapy sessions.
Valentine’s Day handwriting activity
This free slide deck includes two separate activities. The first is a match up game, a lot like the virtual handwriting activities we’ve shared before, including this pencil theme write the room activity.
In this particular therapy slide deck, students can use the Valentine’s Day theme to identify the missing item on the match-up, spot it style of Valentine’s Day puzzles.
Then, on the next slide, students are given a handwriting task where they copy the word and a sentence.
There are several reasons why I’ve included these two activities together on a handwriting therapy activity.
When kids complete a spot-it game visual perception activity, they are challenging and developing several visual perceptual skills including form constancy, visual discrimination, visual memory, and visual figure ground skills.
All of these perceptual skills are needed for copying written work. When a child copies a word, they need to visually shift from their paper to the word or sentence that they are copying. To copy, students need visual perceptual skills of visual memory so that they can recall where they left off as they copy letters and words. They also need visual discrimination skills to quickly identify the differences between letters. Finally, kids need visual figure ground skills so that they can visually pull out the letters or words that they pull out of a sentence as they copy.
So, in this slide deck, students can first determine the image that is different between the two circles. One Valentine’s Day symbol is matching and all others are different. The student can click on the heart in the corner of the slide and drag it onto the matching Valentine’s Day symbols.
Next, each match-up puzzle in the deck is followed by a handwriting activity. Users can copy the word or they can copy the sentence, or they can copy both! This slide deck is very adaptable depending on the needs of the child.
You’ll find different Valentines themes including cute animals with hearts, heart trees, sweet treats, heart cupcakes, emojis, conversation hearts, watercolor hearts, and even more heart themes!
Additionally, this activity is available on Google Jamboard so that users can write right on the slide with a stylus or their finger.
Free Valentine’s Day Handwriting Slide Deck
Want to add this slide deck to your therapy toolbox? Enter your email address into the form below.
Enter your email address below and you will receive a PDF containing a link to copy the slide deck onto your Google drive. Next, save that PDF file, because you can come back to it again and again and send it to the kids on your caseload (or classroom) so they can make their own copy on their Google drive.
Please use the copy of the slide deck and do not change the url.
Want to add more Valentine’s Day activities and movement tools to your skill-building?
he Valentine’s Day Fine Motor Kit is here! This printable kit is 25 pages of hands-on activity sheets designed to build skills in pinch and grasp strength, endurance, eye-hand coordination, precision, dexterity, pencil control, handwriting, scissor skills, coloring, and more.
When you grab the Valentine’s Day Fine Motor Kit now, you’ll get a free BONUS activity: 1-10 clip cards so you can challenge hand strength and endurance with a counting eye-hand coordination activity.
Click here to grab your copy of the Valentine’s Day Fine Motor Kit.
Colleen Beck, OTR/L has been an occupational therapist since 2000, working in school-based, hand therapy, outpatient peds, EI, and SNF. Colleen created The OT Toolbox to inspire therapists, teachers, and parents with easy and fun tools to help children thrive. Read her story about going from an OT making $3/hour (after paying for kids’ childcare) to a full-time OT resource creator for millions of readers. Want to collaborate? Send an email to contact@theottoolbox.com.