Toddler/Preschool Valentine's Day Crafts

Just about every day, Evan asks to "Do a craft?". So I've been trying to plan more crafts and activities for him. The Toddler/Preschool Activity Bags that we made this past summer have come in handy, but some of those things are still too involved for Evan, and I look forward to using those next school year.

I've been trying to do some crafts and activities with Evan, at least a couple of things a day. Some of the things follow a theme, many do not. Valentine's Day has been our latest theme. One of the crafts we did was simply gluing tissue paper squares onto a heart cut out of construction paper. I like him to have practice in spreading the glue around with his fingers, instead of using a gluestick all the time. So next time I'll use cardstock, so it holds up better with the more "liquidy" glue.

He was quite proud of his work!
Another craft we did, was a collage of hearts. I precut the hearts out of construction paper, and let him glue them to the cardboard. So simple, but he loved it!

Ta daah!

The next activity Evan did this past week, was to use beans to fill in a heart that I drew onto cardboard. It dried clear, but unfortunately I don't have a finished picture to show you.
I suppose you could do a shape to suit any theme and fill in with any number of things, too, like colorful buttons or rice.

I had this foam doornob hanger on hand and decided to let him use some foam heart stickers to decorate it. Peeling the back off of the stickers can be a real challenge for his little fingers, but it's great for developing those fine motor skills. We did a little recycling for this craft. I used the Valentine's Day edition of the Oriental Trading catalog. I cut out pictures and let Evan glue them on. This time he used a glue stick because I was afraid the flimsy paper wouldn't hold up to regular bottles glue. Alexa joined him for this craft. They added stickers to their creations, too. Evan's...Alexa's...And here are a few things I plan to use this coming week....

First is this math activity made out of and egg carton, popsicle sticks and foam heart stickers.

I cut slits in the top of the egg cartons, and put numbered, heart foam stickers on the front of each section.
Then I put 1 though 6 hearts on 6 popsicle sticks. I wrote the number of hearts on each stick.
I will use this for Evan to practice counting to 6, and for number recognition up to 6. He'll match the numbers on the sticks to the numbers on the egg carton and slide the stick into the correct slot.Another craft for next week will be a heart suncatcher. I precut two hearts out of clear contact paper. I will tape one heart, sticky side up, to the table. Then I'll give him tissue paper shapes to put on his heart, along with some shiny mini hearts and construction paper hearts. When he's finished, we'll put the other contact paper heart on top, sticky side down, and whole punch it. I have some red curly ribbon, so we can hang it in the window.It should turn out cute. I'll try to post a picture next week.

Hope you have a wonderful weekend!

TTFN

~Tina