Most people know Valentine’s Day as a time to celebrate love (with a side order of flowers and chocolate!), but it’s also a great time to crank up the children’s crafts. Below are five Valentine’s Day themed activities that your little ones are sure to enjoy.
1. Button Heart Valentine Craft
This colorful craft can make a great decorative item for your mantel, and it’s a fantastic way to help your child sharpen their fine motor skills as well. Using nothing more than some red and pink scrapbook paper, school glue and plenty of buttons in various colors and sizes, you can create a Valentine’s themed craft that Cupid himself would be proud of! Jamie from Hands on as We Grow has all the step-by-step details for this fun activity.
2. Mosaic Heart
As you know, it’s important for your child to practice developing their scissor skills, and this mosaic heart Valentine’s craft is the perfect activity to help them do just that. Your child will cut scraps of red and pink construction paper into small pieces, and then place those pieces in a mosaic-like arrangement on a white paper heart cutout using school glue. So not only will your little one have fun while practicing their cutting skills, but this craft is also a great way to use up any extra scrap paper you might have lying around. Allison from No Time for Flash Cards explains the how-to steps for this craft.
3. Valentine’s Play Dough Activity
For most kids, simply adding play dough into the mix is enough to make any activity a blast. This Valentine’s Day play dough activity tray from Little Bins for Little Hands is super-easy to put together, as it includes inexpensive materials such as legos, acrylic hearts from the craft store, XO tiles, glitter, heart cookie cutters, heart-shaped toothpicks, buttons, stampers, and of course, play dough. It’s a great way for your child to use their imagination to create various concoctions (heart-shaped play dough cookies, anyone?), and with the different types of materials they’ll be using, it can stimulate tactile learning as well.
4. Valentine’s Marbled Salt Dough Heart
What’s a children’s activity without a little salt dough? Using this classic craft mixed with some colorful powdered tempera paints, you can help your child create beautifully vibrant salt dough Valentine’s heart ornaments for garlands, table scatters, basket fillers, etc. Get the full instructions for Marbled Salt Dough Hearts.
5. Valentine “Heart People”
Your little one will have a blast creating a family of Valentine “heart people” using simple craft supplies that you probably already have lying around the house: Construction paper (red or pink), glue, scissors, markers, pom-poms, googly eyes (aren’t they the best?), and buttons. To make a heart person, you will basically draw a nice, big heart on a piece of construction paper, and then have your kids cut it out. They can then convert this heart into a face using the pom-poms, googly eyes, buttons, and some markers. After that, your child will cut out strips of paper and fold them accordion-style to make the arms and legs, and then attach those limbs to the heart face using school glue. Voila – you’ve got yourself a heart person! This can keep your little one occupied for quite a while, because more than likely they’ll be eager to make a whole family of heart people! To see a great example of this craft, you can visit East Coast Mommy’s blog.
So there you have it – some fun and educational Valentine’s Day themed activities that your kids will love. Now go forth and get crafty!
