Easy Valentine’s Day Crafts

There are so many ideas for Valentine’s Day crafts out there, but this year I wanted to keep it simple. Let’s look at some cute and fun Valentine’s Day crafts kids can do in the classroom or at home.

A simple paper weaving heart is a great project for practicing fine motor skills, and you can make it all with paper strips or add in yarn or different kinds of paper for different textures. Little Ladoo has a printable template for the heart shape with lines you can cut (an adult should do that part) to hold the weaving.

Cutting out and doodling on hearts makes a super cute craft, which you can turn into a garland or join hearts together to hang from the ceiling, or just make a bulletin board decoration. Or you can make a bouquet of hearts like in this project from Make and Takes. This one is shown as a greeting card but I also love the idea of kids making hearts to give to each other (so long as everyone makes one for everyone in the classroom).

Another cute card idea is this celery print heart card from The Merry Thought. Use the cut end of celery to make heart shapes to decorate cards or other Valentine’s Day projects.

Valentine’s Day, like any other time of year, is ripe for STEM experiments and projects, and The Best Ideas for Kids has a collection of classic STEM ideas with a Valentine’s twist. Of these only one (borax crystal hearts) really qualifies as a craft, but they’re all fun to make with kids in the classroom or at home.

If you have a small group of kids (and a little time for prep) you can make these cute no-sew heart pillows from Sugar Spice and Glitter. Depending on the age of the kids and the number of pairs of scissors you have, you can prep this one by cutting out the hearts and the ties or just just the hearts, or let the kids do it all themselves.

Need more ideas? Check out these posts on Valentine’s Day crafts for the classroom and printable Valentines kids can color.

When my daughter was younger I would spend a lot of time trying to come up with activities she could do in the car on long road trips and things to entertain her when we were waiting at restaurants and things that didn’t involve screens.

But it turns out there are a lot of great activities you can do with just a piece of paper and a pen.

What Do We Do All Day has a great collection of pen and paper games, including some that can be done with just one person, though they’re all more fun if you have at least two.

There are some classics on here like hangman and dots and boxes, but there are also quite a few I hadn’t heard of before.

I don’t want to spoil the whole list for you because you should definitely click over there and look around, but I will share about the one that you see pictured above.

This game is called Bridges, and you start by making the big random shape and the dividing it into a bunch of sections (the post says 30-50 sections is ideal but I think this one is smaller than that).

Each player gets their own color marker and you take turns drawing bridges from one space to another, crossing a third. Once there’s a bridge, no other bridges can start, end or cross in those spaces. Keep going until no more bridges can be built, and the person who makes the last bridge wins.

Check out the post over at What We Do All Day for more great ideas for no or almost-no prep games you can play with your kids or that kids can play together. I’d love to know if you have a favorite paper and pen game, whether it’s on this list or a different one.

[Photo: What We Do All Day]

Have you read?

Leave a Reply