Age 3-5 years
I love my heart paper punch and my kids do too. It’s fun to make hearts for Valentine’s Day Crafts but you can also use them for math, write letters on them and play match.. the variations are endless. These three activities are just a few of the ways we have used punched out paper hearts lately.
Shake Painted Valentine
I love painting in new ways and this was a great craft for my 19 month old who as you can see even helps me make a mess with a low mess activity like this. For another version of Valentine shake painting check out Hands On As We Grow- older kids will dig how they did it for sure!
- Gather your materials. You will need a plastic food container, some punched hearts( or cut out from construction paper), a piece of card stock, glue and paint of your choosing.
- Punch out some hearts from construction paper.
- Place them and paint in the food container.
It’s easier to put the paint in first, they shake better that way. If you are nuts enough to hand your toddler the bottle of paint like I was be ready with a washcloth or my favorite- wipes.
- Put the top on and shake.
- Open and be amazed!
- Fold the card stock and add glue .
- Add hearts to glue and let dry.
After seeing how cool the hearts looked someone else wanted in on the fun. 
Heart Patterns
Valentine’s Day doesn’t have to only be about arts and crafts, we love math and made this super easy patterning activity.
- Gather your materials. You will need your paper hearts, a cookie sheet ( check out the dollar store), some double stick tape , a paper cup and a sheet of construction paper.
- Start by taping the paper down on the cookie sheet and adding double stick tape to the hearts.
- Make some simple patterns. I like to start simple then slip a harder one or two in before getting easier again. I want my son to feel successful but challenged.
- Place the extra in a cup . I make sure there aren’t too many extra hearts but that there is more than the few he needs to finish the pattern.
- Complete the patterns.
After we were done with this my daughter ( who is all about hearts right now)painted over it for a valentine for my husband. I love when we reuse tray table activities like that.
Heart Color Match
This is another easy tray activity. Using a silicone pan I placed a different color paper heart in each and had the corresponding colors in a pile waiting to be matched up. This was too hard for my daughter at 19 months and my son would be bored to tears with it. It’s smack in the middle between their abilities so no pics of their participation but I still wanted to include the idea for the older toddlers and younger preschoolers who would love it.
Heart of Hearts Collage
I made this last year over at my other blog Craftitivity Corner on FamilyEducation.com pop over to see the tutorial.
I use this activity to help my kindergartener son practice his spelling words. Because let’s face it, memorizing things isn’t fun for young children. Since my 3 year old daughter thinks she should do everything her big brother does, I adjusted this for her to practice her letters, numbers, and writing practice.
All you will need to do this simple activity are paper and crayons. That’s it.
I drew an upper and lower case A for my daughter and her friend. But we also did a couple of numbers and threw in some shapes, too.
Have your child trace the letter, shape, or number with any color crayon. As they are tracing it have them say it out loud, too. For letters we say the letters and then say the sound they make. For shapes we will say the shape and then say something that is that shape. You get the idea.
Have them trace over the object again with a different color crayon.
Then have them repeat it again with another color, and so on until all seven colors of the rainbow are used.
Our friends had a little trouble getting the idea at first, they wanted to draw another one next to the one I had drawn. But with a little bit of guidance they saw that it would make that one a rainbow and then they were eager to do it.
Now you have a rainbowed letter (or number or shape).
This is a very easy way to get your child to do repetition without making it seem like doing the same thing seven times. It is great for handwriting and pencil grasp practice, along with recognition of letters, shapes, numbers, and colors. It really is a lot of fun and your refrigerator will soon be covered with rainbowed objects. Just a warning.
Kim is a contributing writer for No Time For Flash Cards, a mom to a toddler, a preschooler, and a foster parent, too. She juggles her day by trying out fun activities and crafts with the kids. After all, she is just a big kid herself. See what she has been up to over at Mom Tried It.
When I suggested this idea to my son for the Tinker Lab Paper Bag Challenge he bolted to the playroom to start finding supplies. One problem his sister was napping and I’d worked hard to get her to sleep, I wasn’t about to wake her with the sounds of exploding bags. So we waited until this weekend and to say it was worth the wait is a total understatement. Our Love Bomb was fun to do and the end product was even cuter than I thought it would be.
- Gather your materials. You will need some paper bags, scrap construction paper, a canvas or heavy paper,contact paper, white glue, scissors and/ or a hole punch.
- Start by cutting your scrap paper into small pieces.
We used scissors and a hole punch.
- Pop them in the bags. We made 3 bags with a handful of confetti in each.
- Make a heart with contact paper.
- Pop the heart on the canvas. spread glue all over the canvas. Make sure there is lots along the edge of the contact paper. Forgive the photos, my camera dove to the floor on Friday and my new one hasn’t arrived yet. Thank you apple for my iPhone camera!
- Time for some confetti explosions, you might want to do this outside.
- Blow it up
- Smack it as hard as you can. It took us a few tries and we practiced earlier.
- Bam! Some of the confetti will fly out but you still have to give it a little shake to get it all.
- After all have been popped, gently push the confetti that are on the heart to the edge. Let dry for only a few minutes then peel off the heart.
- Let dry over night.
Pretty cool right? We had so much fun, just hearing the giggles that emanated from my son was enough to do this again and again!
Check out the other creative uses for paper bags at Tinker Lab.
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For about 3 weeks we’ve been writing on our playroom wall, well on paper attached to the wall. Both my kids, friends who have come by and even my husband and I have contributed to this on going mural. My daughter loves to write on vertical surfaces and she is just starting to point out letters in books and other print so I figures we could fill both those needs and create a cooperative project for my son and her as well.
- Gather your materials. You will need some painters tape ( don’t buy the cheap stuff, I did and it’s cheap for a reason), butcher block ( aka craft paper), marker and then the materials to decorate things like crayons, markers, stickers…
- Clear a large wall space, part of the magic of a mural is it’s size so to make a simple project like this super make it big. Hang the paper up.
- Write out the alphabet . I thought I had it spaced well but poor little z got almost no space.
- Add kids. Sometimes I ask her to find a letter and color, often I just put the crayon jar on the floor and watch.
- We added stickers . My son put them on the matching letter, and directed my daughter where to put them too. Stickers are great little fine motor exercises especially peeling them off their original sheets.
- Now every time we are in the playroom ( many times a day) someone adds something.
Not sure how long we will leave it up but for now we are having fun with it. Below is the mural today- check out all the stars on the letter S, it’s my daughter’s favorite word these days!
Alphabet Books
by Denise Fleming is a wonderful example of what an alphabet book should be. Perfect for toddlers and preschoolers learning their first letters, the text is short , the letters are front and center and the illustrations are fun and interesting. My son loves this book, I grabbed it at the library after remembering how much my Pre K class loved it too.Many alphabet books are too long to read entirety at circle time or in one shot with a toddler but this my 19 month old will sit through Z every time. {This review is from when my son was 19 months old in 2008. His love of this book was really a jumping off point for his love of letters in general. I wish I could say I taught him his letters but really reading this one particular book over and over at his request probably did the trick. }
Chicka Chicka ABC
Al Pha’s Bet
This ripped paper snowman craft was inspired by the book Snowmen At Night and my daughter’s love of ripping toilet paper into teeny tiny pieces. As annoying as that habit is as a parent it’s actually really great for her fine motor development so it never makes me too angry to see. I harnessed that in this craft and we had fun making a ” no man” together while her brother was at school.
- Gather your materials. You will need 2 sheets of construction paper( black and white), a small scrap of orange, a scrap of ribbon, googly eyes, toilet paper,glue, scissors and a white crayon.
- Start by cutting out a snowman body and moon from the white paper. If you are doing this with older children have them do the drawing or cutting or both.
- Hand your child the crayon and ask them to make stars, shooting stars or snowflakes in the sky. With little ones like my daughter who are at the labeling stage ( she is 19 months) I would keep it simple using something they are familiar with. For her she knows what stars are so I asked her to make stars in the sky and made one as an example. Then let her do what she wanted.
- While she did that I cut out a nose from the scrap paper.
- Rip the paper!
As she ripped I took some of the ripped pieces out of reach because she wanted to rip the smallest ones into teeny tiny pieces and I wanted to encourage that fine motor practice.
- Time for glue. Do not fret about where they put glue, I don’t open it all the way but make them work for it, but not so closed that they will get frustrated.
- Add the body and moon – again with older kids you may want to add arms. Tiny easy to rip pieces can be tricky for little hands so didn’t add any to this craft but do what fits best with your child’s development.
- When she added the moon she sat there squishing the glue under it for a few moments, expect play like this, welcome play like this. When we added the glue for it I narrated that the moon goes in the sky, also pointing out at the sky from the window. Use crafts as a way to teach but don’t stress about the end product.
- Add more glue for the toilet paper. With tiny ones like my daughter you might have to help add the glue for the collage, but let them do as much as they can before stepping in.
- Squish it on.
- Add the nose.
- I added the eyes and the scarf , she loves to unravel ribbon and the eyes are perfect for eating in her books. If you want the kids to do these but are still young try plain paper eyes ( many kids don’t put that in their mouths, even when they are similar in size to googly eyes, but as always watch and remember stay within arms reach when kids are at the mouthing stage). Don’t forget to hang toddler art up, my daughter is clearly proud pointing out her crafts or paintings and saying her name after pointing at them. Creating confidence is one of the best parts of crafting with kids.
Snowmen At Night
Snowmen at Night
I love this book and actually looked for 2 hours in our playroom and storage room convinced I owned it but misplaced it. I don’t. I finally sat down to read it to my daughter at her school last week. She liked the snowmen but wasn’t as into it as I suspect she will be next winter. The story is adorable but a little sophisticated for a 19 month old. My son has read it and loved it, because it taps into a child’s imagination perfectly. The author imagines a world where snowmen come to life and party at night when we are sleeping, which is why they always look a little different in the morning. I remember my son looking at me and asking ” not really right?” when we read it a few years ago. I love the whimsical illustrations with fun points of view that makes the reader feel like they are in on a real secret. Great book for preschoolers, I was a little over eager reading it with my daughter but it’s so good I couldn’t wait to.
