This set of Valentine Heart Letter Printables will help children practice matching letters and matching letters to beginning sounds.
I made these mats after finding a package of wooden hearts in a craft store. I painted them in pastel colors: pink, lavender, yellow, green, orange, and light blue, and I wrote letters on them. Then I made this collection of mats to go with the hearts.
Check out more Valentine Learning Activities here!
Making the Hearts
For this activity, you will need to make the heart manipulatives.
The wooden hearts are still available in some craft stores and are easy to make. If you do not wish to make the wooden hearts, just print out a copy of the colored hearts mat (download below) and cut them out and use those for the letter manipulatives
I painted the wooden hearts with pastel colored acrylic craft paint, wrote the letters of the alphabet on them, and sprayed over them with clear spray paint to protect them from getting dirty. If you will be using the colored mats I have included, make sure you write the correct letter on the matching colored heart:
- A, G, M, S, Y are pink
- B, H, N, T, Z are lavendar
- C, I, O, U are yellow
- D, J, P, V are light green
- E, K, Q, W are light orange
- F, L, R, X are light blue
Valentine Letter Matching Mats
Print out the mats in your choice of blackline or color. The colored mats help children find the matching letters more easily. Children will choose a heart, look at the letter on the heart, and match it to the same letter heart on the mat. Continue until all of the hearts are covered. Children can match uppercase to uppercase letters or uppercase to lowercase letters.
Some children may enjoy using the blackline mats as a recording sheet. They will match the colored wooden hearts to the mat by matching the letters, then use a crayon to color the heart on the mat the correct color.
Download: Valentine Letter Activities
Note: These are free printables, just click to download.
Valentine Letter Sounds Game
Print out the mats and laminate if you choose. Use the same heart manipulatives described in the above activity (wooden or printed).
To play this game, children identify the beginning sound in each picture, find the letter heart, and place it on the heart beside the picture. For example, for the picture “dog”, children would find a green heart with a D, and place the heart on the green heart on the mat. The color-coding helps them narrow down which letter belongs in each place (since there are only 4-5 letters for each color), and can serve as self-correction. If they choose a yellow heart for the word “dog”, they will realize the color doesn’t match and will need to try again.
There are two sets with letters A-Z: one set has short vowels with consonants and the other set has long vowels with consonants.
Download: Valentine Letter Sounds Set #1
Download: Valentine Letter Sounds Set #2
You might also like these Valentine Printables from my shop:
Post originally published January 2009