Five days of Valentine Sensory play activities week plan

Day One :: sensory tub

For our first day of Valentine sensory play let’s start with a sensory tub. If you’ve never made a sensory tub before it’s really easy – and such a versatile invitation to play.

Get a tub of some kind: a box, a big bowl, a plastic container. You can even turn a paddling pool or sand or water tray into a huge sensory tub.

Fill your tub with a base material. The choice is yours but it needs to be something that’s safe for your children to play with: water, sand, ice, ripped-up paper, rice, pasta… You might like to add a drop of pink food colouring to your water or ice to make it Valentine-coloured, and you can also dye your rice or dye your pasta.

Add some extras: by adding extra loose parts to your sensory tub you’re upping the play possibilities and bringing more texture and interest to the sensory play. Again, anything goes as long as it is safe for your children to play with. You might add spoons and bowls, funnels and a colander, shells, cookie cutters, or my printable heart alphabet cards. 

Then invite your children to come and play!

I would love to see how you set up your Valentine sensory tub and hear how your children interact with it. Share a photo with our community on Instagram using #ideasfromnurturestore so we can all visit.

Day Two :: play dough

On day two of our Valentine sensory play week let’s explore play dough.

Play dough is one of the very favourite play materials in our house. It’s so versatile, great for developing fine motor skills, and such a spark for creative play. You can use store-bought play dough or make your own. This is my favourite easy peasy, no-cook play dough recipe. You can add pink or red food colouring to fit our Valentine theme, and perhaps a drop of almond or rose food essence for fragrance.

Set out your play dough with some kitchen items such as rolling pins, spoons, cookie cutters and cake cases. If you have a chocolate box to add in, wonderful!

Then it’s over to the children to see what they can make.

If you’d like to share their creations with us, please post a photo on Instagram and use #idesfromnurturetore.

Day Three :: marbling

On day three of our Valentine sensory week, let’s try a combination of sensory art and science: marbling.

Marbling is an exciting art technique, that’s very easy to do and produces prints all with their unique design.

I’ve got a step-by-step guide on how to marble here, but the basics are to use food colouring on top of shaving foam to create colourful patterns. You press a piece of card down onto the shaving foam, peel back, and reveal your marbling print.

Have lots of card ready because once our children try it once they’re going to want to make more and more!

To fit with our Valentine theme you might like to cut out your prints into heart shapes. You could hand them out to people you love, or stick them up all over a door or wall. Click here if you’d like to see how to make them into a beautiful heart mobile.

Day Four :: melting hearts

On day four of our Valentine week, let’s explore ice and see if we can melt someone’s heart!

If you have a heart-shaped ice cube tray – perfect. If not, you can use any ice cube tray or small plastic container. Fill them with water, and perhaps a drop of red or pink food colouring, and pop them in the freezer until they’re solid. If it’s cold enough you could leave the trays outdoors and show your childen how nature does the freezing.

When you’re ready to play, bring out the frozen ice blocks and explore how you can get them to melt. You might offer bowls of warm water with spoons or pipettes. For a real wow-factor offer salt – coloured pink or red if you want to go all out on the Valentine colours. (Here’s how to make coloured salt.) Salt-melted ice blocks look amazing!

Listen in while your children are playing and you might hear them invent stories about the melted ice, or they might theories about why it melt. This sensory play is a wonderful opportunity to think like a scientist or storyteller.