Valentine’s Day is a great excuse to get out your craft supplies. Valentine’s Day crafts with your preschooler can be fun and easy.
This holiday is all about love! And if there is anything we want to show our children, it’s how much we love them and how valuable it is to express love to those you care about. I think back fondly to the valentines my mom gave me each year and how special I felt receiving them. That is something I want to continue and pass onto my child.
The crafts you gravitate toward may depend on your kiddo’s age, but with parental supervision, most children ages five and younger should be able to participate in these activities.
Hand-Drawn Hearts
To decorate for Valentine’s Day, I plan to make a chain of hearts to hang in my living room or maybe over my little guy’s bed.
I’ll use pink, red and white paper and corresponding crayons or oil pastels. He will draw all over the paper and when he is finished, I’ll use a separate paper to draw and cut out a small heart. I’ll do the cutting for him because he’s still too young for safety scissors.
We’ll use the cutout heart as a pattern, tracing around it on his drawings. I’ll try to trace as many hearts as I can on his drawing, picking the spots where he did the most drawing. Then, I’ll cut out the hearts, hole-punch them, and string them together with some yarn.
These hand-drawn hearts also make great Valentine’s cards. Just add your message to the back and have your little one “sign” them.
Handprint Flowers
Creating a bouquet of handprint flowers is another fun and simple craft that works especially well if your little one is reallyyyy little.
You’ll need some washable paint, a paper plate and a larger piece of construction paper or another heavy paper. The wrong side of a cut-up paper grocery bag could work, too.
Any paint that gets on clothes or surfaces should wash out, but you might want to put down an old sheet and have your child wear an apron or an old shirt.
Spread the paint on the paper plate. You could use shades of red and pink, multiple colors or just a single color.
Place one of your child’s hands in the paint with fingers spread apart. Make sure the paint is across the entire hand.
Have your child “stamp” the paper in the top half of the paper. It isn’t too important where the handprints land.
Then, add the flower stems with green paint or a marker. Depending on your kiddo’s ability, you might have to handle creating the stems.
Once the paint dries, you can hang the paper, as is. Or, you could cut around the bouquet so that your child can present it to a loved one. (Hint: Grandparents LOVE this.)
Love Bugs
For four- and five-year-olds who are ready for a bit more of a challenge, a love bug could be the perfect way to go.
Essentially, this craft creates a bug face out of paper or a paper plate, and you add antennae, eyes and other decorations. There is a lot of wiggle room, though, so feel free to use what you have available at home.
For instance, if they are easily available, you can provide googly eyes and pipe cleaners for your child to use for the eyes and antennae. Or, just create the eyes and antennae by cutting out construction paper or even coloring on printer paper and then cutting them out.
I also like to incorporate hearts to emphasize the ‘love’ part of the bug.
I find that paper plates work well for the bug’s head because they are a bit more sturdy. But you and your little one can kind of go in any direction with this craft.
Maybe you want to attach googly eyes with glue. Or maybe your kiddo is more skilled with using safety scissors and opts to cut out hearts for the eyes.
If you go for the pipe cleaners, you can tape them to the back of the plate or make a hole, feed the pipe cleaner through, and wrap it around itself to hold it together.
You could even cut out holes where the eyes are and turn it into a love bug mask for when your kiddo plays pretend.
Making Memories
You can help your kiddo as much or as little as needed with these crafts. What really will stick is how much fun they had spending an afternoon crafting it, making messes and being creative with you.
Sophie Hamel is a freelance writer and works in advocacy for victims of interpersonal violence. Her son is two-and-a-half years old.
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