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Brain-Building Valentines Activities: Midline Crossing, Fine Motor, Vestibular, Visual Planning
This post contains fun Valentines activities to help with your child’s learning development. Affiliate links are included for your convenience. Integrated Learning Strategies (ILS) is a learning and academic center. As a reminder, ILS is not a health care provider and none of our materials or services provide a diagnosis or treatment of a specific condition or learning challenge you may see in your child or student. If you seek a diagnosis or treatment for your child or student, please contact a trained professional who can provide an evaluation of the child.
Holidays create some of the best opportunities for learning development and learning activities. Of course, Valentines Day is no exception. As you know, any excuse to improve your students’ gross and fine motor skills, tactile awareness and sensory integration is great.
Building the brain takes a lot of preparation and work, but why not have a little fun doing it. That is why we’ve compiled several great Valentines Day activities and exercises to help your child cross the midline, improve their visual skills for reading, strengthen the use of their fingers and hands for handwriting and pencil grip, and build their vestibular systems, proprioception and muscle tone, mixed with a little science. Whew! That is a lot in one article, but here we go.
Bubbly Hearts
What you will need:
On plain white paper, take your Elmer’s glue and draw several hearts on the page (create various sizes). You don’t need to wait for the glue to dry and you may even need two coats of glue. Mix your baking soda, red food coloring and vinegar in a separate bowl and let it fizz, just like you would do to make a volcano. Using the fine motor dropper, help your child fill the dropper with our bubbly mixture and add it to the inside of our hearts. Encourage them to stay within the lines if possible.
Using fine motor droppers will help your child strengthen their fingers and hands used for handwriting and pencil grip. We especially like to strengthen the thumb and index finger (also known as the pincer grasp) to prepare your child for holding a pencil or for getting them familiar with the process if they have weak hand muscles or poor handwriting.
Tape Hearts
What you will need:
With fun craft tape or duct tape, design a heart on your counter or kitchen table. Place tape directly on the table in the shape of a heart. Have your child peel the tape off using both their right and left hands (alternating). Do not let your child peel the tape off using both hands at the same time. This is usually a sign that they have weak fingers and hands.
The goal is to work that pincer grasp and their fine motor skills. They should be able to peel the tape off the table with one hand at a time to strengthen their muscles enough for handwriting and pencil grip. If they are young and have not yet established hand-dominance, meaning you don’t know if they are right or left-handed, encourage them to try the activity using both the right and left hands separately. Even though they have not yet established dominance, it will strengthen both hands in preparation for when they are ready to choose which hand they will use for writing.
Pompom Hearts
What you will need:
On a sheet of paper, draw a large heart with your marker. Have your child take a close pin and grasp one of the pompoms (encourage them to do this activity with one hand using their thumb and index finger).
When the pompom is attached to the close pin, have your child dip the pompom in some paint and dab it on the heart. They can do this activity with several different sizes of pompoms.
Help your child stay within the lines if possible. This is another great way to improve your child’s fine motor skills for handwriting.
Dragging Hearts
What you will need:
With your construction paper, cut out two hearts and make them as large as possible. At the end of a long hallway or in your living room make lots of room for your child. Have your child start at one end of the room and place their feet on the two hearts.
Then have your child put their hands on the ground, with their feet firmly planted on the hearts, and have them do the bear crawl or the Spiderman across the living room floor. With the bear crawl, make sure they use both the same hand with the same foot. For the Spiderman, help your child use alternating feet and hands as they cross the room (slightly different exercises working different parts of the brain).
This activity builds your child’s arms, legs and neck muscles used for motor planning, hand-eye coordination and attention and focus. Both the bear crawl and the Spiderman build neural connections in the brain for higher learning.
Marble Maze
This activity is by far one of my favorites from The Inspired Treehouse. With some yarn or pipe cleaner you can shape a heart into a maze for your child. Your child has to guide the marble through the maze. The heart maze activity is incredibly important and valuable for strengthening your child’s eye muscles and improves their visual planning. Because they have to track the marble with their eyes, this prepares them for tracking words on a page, helps guide their hand movement (writing) using their vision, and improves decoding and recognizing letters along with many other reading benefits.
Click here for instructions on how to create your own.
Heart Balance Beam
What you will need:
The purpose of this activity is to create a “fake” balance beam to help your child with their vestibular system and balance and coordination. First, cut out several hearts with your construction paper (I cut 24 hearts). Punch holes in both the top and bottom of each heart. Tie them together with the string to make a lengthy balance beam.
A poor vestibular system is tied to several learning delays and challenges. If your child struggles in school and has developmental delays, poor muscle tone and bad behavior, there is a possibility they may have an under-developed vestibular system. That is why you can do several activities with our balance beam to help them get the integration they need to improve their vestibular system. Here are a few of our favorite activities:
Activity 1: Midline Crossing with Ribbons
What you will need:
- Ribbon Sticks
- Heart Balance Beam
Have your child begin at the end of the heart balance beam. As they walk across the balance beam have your child take the ribbon sticks and criss-cross them in front of their face alternating right and left arms. This is one way to help your child cross the midline with their arms while improving their vestibular system by walking along the balance beam. If this is too tricky at first, help them build their balance first on the balance beam and then add the ribbons later.
Activity 2: Eye-tracking with Bean Bags
What you will need:
- Beanbag
- Heart Balance Beam
As your child begins walking on the balance beam, have them throw the beanbag in the air and catch it with their hands while they are walking. This activity can be extremely difficult for some children. If they can’t walk and throw the beanbag at the same time, you will want to start out small and work up to it. Eventually you want them doing this activity on their own with both the beanbag and the balance beam together. We want to work those vestibular systems while building their hand-eye coordination. It will help your child’s eye-tracking and visual planning as they prepare to read and write.
Activity 3: Hula Hoop
What you will need:
- Hula Hoop
- Heart Balance Beam
While your child is crossing the balance beam, have your child take the hula hoop and put their head through it so it almost touches their shoulders, then have them raise it above their head, and finally bring the hula hoop in front of them with their arms extended. A simple way to remember it is down, up, front.
Have your child do all of these activities at the same time while walking across the balance beam. It make be tricky at first, but these are great top to bottom exercises used for organizing the brain to improve executive functioning, organization, emotional grounding, expressing emotions, and it also releases the “fight or flight” response in overanxious children.
Crossing the Midline with Feet
What you will need:
Cut out several hearts with your construction paper. Place several side-by-side making a straight line. In the beginning, have your child place both feet firmly on the first two hearts. Then have your child cross one leg over the other to the next heart and back again with the opposite foot (moving forward across the floor).
This activity helps your child cross the midline using their feet. Crossing the midline helps your child sit still in their chair, listen to the teacher (auditory processing), retain letters and words, and improves attention, focus and behavior.
Integrated Learning Strategies is a Utah-based center dedicated to helping mainstream children and children with learning challenges achieve academic success. Our services provide kids with non-traditional tutoring programs within the Davis County, Kaysville, Layton, Syracuse, Farmington, and Centerville areas. Areas to find Integrated Learning Strategies include: Reading tutors in Kaysville, Math tutors in Kaysville, Common Core Tutors in Kaysville, Tutors in Utah, Utah Tutoring Programs
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