Any holiday gives you the perfect excuse to make crafts and to plan fun activities with your children. Valentine’s Day is no exception. Depending on the age of your children, how much time you have and their interests, you can make a wide range of crafts, from simple paper projects to more elaborate cooking and sewing activities.
Valentine’s Day Heart Mobile
Turn a discarded wire clothes hanger into a fun, simple-to-make mobile. Help your child cut several hearts from pink, red and white construction paper. Make the hearts a range of sizes. The child can draw on or decorate the hearts if she would like, or you can leave them plain. Punch a hole in the top of each heart. Thread a piece of fishing line or yarn through it. Tie the yarn to the bottom of the hanger. Make the lengths of the yarn different, so that the hearts hang at different lengths. Hang the mobile in the window or from a hook on the ceiling.
Heart Wreath
If you child is older, you can attempt to build a Valentine’s Day wreath. Cut several hearts, about 2 to 3 inches wide, from construction paper. Have the child wrap a Styrofoam wreath form with red or pink tinsel garland. Carefully hot glue the paper hearts to the wreath and the tinsel. Tie a shiny pink ribbon around the top of the wreath and, hang it on a door.
Valentine’s Candy
Teach your child the joys of candy making by melting chocolate wafers and pouring the candy into Valentine-themed molds. Choose regular milk or dark chocolate or use white chocolate discs that are dyed red or pink. As the chocolate sets in the molds, have your child place a lollipop stick in each one. Once the candy has hardened, wrap it in cellophane and tie closed with a red ribbon.
Fill in the Blanks
Help a child write a Valentine’s Day-themed story, perhaps about the history of the holiday or about something happening in his life. Have him type the story. After it is finished, help him choose what words to take out and put a blank line as well as the part of speech in the place of the word. Make a list of the missing parts of speech, in the order in which they are missing. Print out the your fill-in-the-blank story and have your child give it to his friends in place of Valentine’s Day cards.
Acrostic Poems
Help your child write an acrostic poem, where the first letter of each line spells out a word, such as “heart,” “cupid” or “Valentine.” Write the chosen word vertically on a piece of construction or regular paper, and have your child fill in her poem next to each letter. Cut the paper into a heart shape if you would like or have the child decorate it with Valentine’s Day-themed items, such as cupid’s arrows, hearts or flowers.
Comments