Valentine's Day Lesson Plan for Homeschool Preschool

There are some natural lesson aspects to Valentine's Day, such as hearts and the color red. But there is far more you can pull from the holiday as well. Today's lesson focuses on showing love through service.

Color: Red or teach color sorting

Color Sorting:

Often, teaching children how to sort colors is helpful before you start teaching them the names of colors. They need to be aware of the differences. In the process, they frequently learn the names of the colors with no pressure at all.

Preparation: Make a variety of plain hearts in two or more colors. Children who are younger or new to colors only need two, so start with two, and if that's too easy, the next time, add another color. Make sure each color is the same shade--only one shade of red, for instance. Sorting shades is for advanced students. With beginners, choose colors that are very different from each other.

Prepare a large poster with squares. Prepare a square for each color you're teaching. Put one valentine of that color in the square with the name of the color written on it.

Give your child the stack of hearts mixed up. Let her choose one at a time to sort glue onto the proper box. If your child isn't ready for gluing, you could use real decorated boxes, and let her drop them in the correct box. When she chooses one, pause to see what she says. If she doesn't mention the color, say, "You picked a blue heart! As she is gluing, mention the color a few times. "You're gluing a red heart. I like red hearts."

Don't really teach the color--just present the information. After a while, she is likely to start naming the color if you're doing it yourself--after seeing if she will do it first.

Display the poster somewhere you can talk about it over the next week.

Follow up: Help your child make valentines in those colors, again, casually talking about them. You can also make Valentine's Day cookies in those colors.

Service Projects:

Since Valentine's Day is about love, use this time to teach your child to show love to others. This can become a family tradition. There are many service projects a child can do. I'll offer a list of suggestions later on.

To introduce this, do a brief lesson (ten minutes or less is plenty for most children.) There are several possibilities for this lesson.

Christian lesson on Jesus helping others

Teach stories of Jesus showing kindness to others. You can tell stories of how He healed those with disabilities, or the story of the loaves and fishes. There is a very simple, inexpensive to print coloring page picture of the loaves and fishes in an online lesson manual for toddlers. This is a Mormon website, but this lesson and picture are very generically Christian. After telling your stories, talk about how Jesus also wants us to help others. Ask your child to suggest ways she can help her family. Take her to do one of those things. Then ask her if she knows someone else who needs help (you may need to make suggestions) and make a plan to carry out the ideas. You can also use the materials in the section below.

Non-Religious Lesson on Service

Find stories of children who do service projects. This is one page about kids working for Project Linus. Tell the following little "story" about a small child who helped someone. Change the gender and anything else you want to make the story fit your needs.

Alexander liked to go for walks with his mommy. Sometimes they walked to the park. Near the park was a very little house that looked old and tired. A little boy sometimes played in the yard with his mommy. Their clothes looked very old and worn out and even had holes in them. The little boy only played with one toy, a little car with the wheels all missing.

Alexander asked his mommy why the little boy only had one broken toy. His mommy promised to find out. The next time they went by the house, the mommy and the boy were in the yard together. Alexander's mommy said hi and stopped to chat. She suggested the children play and asked Alexander to share the toy cars he had brought to play with in the park.

Later, Alexander's mommy told Alexander the little boy's daddy had died and the mother couldn't earn very much money. She said the mother worked very hard, but they didn't have enough money for nice clothes and toys. She said she wondered what they could do to help. They went into Alexander's room. His toy box and toy shelves were filled up with toys. Alexander looked at all the nice toys he had. Then he thought about the little boy who only had one toy. "I could give him some of my toys." Alexander's mommy hugged him and said she was very proud of him. Alexander picked up some toys for the little boy, even some of his favorite toys. Then he and his mommy made some good food together and put it in a basket. They took it to the little old house and put them on the doorstep. They knocked and then ran and hid behind some bushes in the park. The little boy opened the door and saw the surprises. He called to his mother and they opened the boxes, very excitedly.

Alexander and his mommy decided to keep their gift a secret. When Alexander came to play with the little boy the next time, he didn't say anything about helping to bring the toys the boy was playing with. He had a good feeling in his heart. He liked being a secret helper and couldn't wait until the next time they brought surprises to the little broken house.

Planning a service project for toddlers and preschoolers

Involve your child in the planning. The more he is involved, the more meaningful it will be. You might want to have a list of three projects and let him choose which one to do and then participate in deciding how to carry it out. He should also make meaningful contributions to actually doing the project. (For instance, if you're bringing cookies to a lonely neighbor, let him help make the cookies, not just tag along when you deliver them.)

Whenever you are doing a personal service project, invite him to help, let him go with you, or talk about it with enthusiasm. Make service a natural part of everyday life.

Suggestions for service projects:

Giving toys to children who need them.

Making pictures for people in nursing homes.

Visiting someone in a nursing home or senior center.

Delivering food to someone who needs it.

Planting a container garden and delivering it.

Gathering food for a food bank.

Making hygiene kits for homeless shelters to hand out. (Contact them to see what to put in them. They usually contain things like sample size soaps, shampoos, razors, and so on.)