How to Make Kids Valentines Crafts

Cards are a common Valentine's Day craft for kids, but they're not the only option for creative imaginations! You can find instructions for hundreds of crafts on the Internet, in books and in your imagination. Whether you are a parent, teacher, daycare supervisor or caring friend, helping kids make Valentine's crafts can be great creative fun for everyone. Just make sure to select the right craft for your children's level of skill, plan ahead and go slowly. The result will be rewarding.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Things You’ll Need:

• Scissors
• Assorted sizes of hearts cut out of different colors and patterns of paper or cloth
• Accessories such yarn, rice, beans and other materials (optional)
• Glue sticks

Choose Your Crafts

1. Talk to the children who will be doing the craft about Valentine's Day and its decorations. What colors and symbols are used? Show them some cards and completed crafts connected with Valentines. Use their feedback when choosing a craft.
2. Consider the amount of preparation the craft will take. You may need to cut out hearts, paper lace and lengths of yarn beforehand.
3. Adapt the craft to your time allotment, age group and materials.
4. Leave room for creativity in your plan. You needn't follow the template provided exactly.
5. Search for Valentine's Day crafts for kids at a website to find appropriate projects.

Create Heart Animals

6. Assemble your materials and pass them out to the children. You will want to hand out an assortment of hearts to each one. (Older children may cut out their own.) If you have a group, ask one or more people to help you.
7. Show several combinations of the hearts to form animals, such as placing two hearts together top to top for a mouse or bottom to bottom for a bunny's face and ears. Younger kids may copy from a template while older ones can invent their own.
8. Encourage the children to lay out the hearts in the shapes they want, rearranging them until they are satisfied with how they look. Get creative with the sizes and patterns. For example, you could create a string of tiny hearts for a mouse's tail or arrange upside-down hearts for an elephant's toes.
9. Supervise the use of glue as the children put the hearts together to make animals. If you have brought out extra materials such as yarn, rice and beans, glue them on as eyes, noses, whiskers, or feet for a three-dimensional effect.
10. Dry the creations on wax paper. Use them as decorations any way you wish. For example, pin them to the corner of a bulletin board, glue them to lengths of yarn and hang them from a ceiling or doorway or arrange them on a mat or in a frame.

Tips & Warnings

• The craft described here is used as an example. The same steps (preparation, introduction of materials, supervised construction) can apply to any craft you choose.
• Take into consideration the maturity of the kids you are working with and what they can handle as far as messy materials like glue.

Who Can Help: