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.

Growing Up Ladybug and How to Become a Butterfly are both by Stepanka Sekaninova and illustrated by Linh Dao, and they came out at the same time and are on similar themes, so let’s look at them together.

Growing Up Ladybug is narrated by Mariella, a seven-spot ladybug. She talks about the parts of a ladybug, where they live, different kinds of ladybugs, why humans love them, their defenses against predators and the life cycle of a ladybug.

The drawings are cute if not always scientifically accurate, it’s not in such a way that’s likely to confuse kids (who probably already know that ladybug mamas don’t push their larval babies around in strollers, for instance.

It’s a good general description of the life cycle of a lady bug and why we like having them around.

About the book: 32 pages, hardcover. Published 2026 by Albatross Media. Suggested retail price $16.95.

Similarly, How to Become a Butterfly covers the life cycle of a butterfly, starting with caterpillars eating burning nettle leaves. (Here Amanda is the narrator.) The book talks about a few of the more than 18,000 daytime butterflies in the world as well as other creatures that live in the meadow (there’s that ladybug again, along with crickets, bees and other bugs).

It also covers some of the enemies of caterpillars like wasps and spiders, and the defenses that caterpillars use to try to prevent being eaten. It illustrates how caterpillars grow and change as they molt and prepare to pupate, and what a caterpillar looks like before and while it is forming its chrysalis. And while the book uses the word metamorphasis it doesn’t really talk about what happens between the caterpillar forming a chrysalis and the butterfly hatching.

This butterfly is a peacock butterfly, and once it hatches the book covers the parts of a butterfly and the life cycle. It also talks about nocturnal moths (though it says nocturnal butterflies are “usually called moths” when moths are actually a different species) and what butterflies do at night.

I’m maybe a little hard on this book because my daughter is a butterfly expert from way back, but it is still cute and good for the very basic basics of the butterfly life cycle.

Both books would be fun additions to your bookshelf for younger kids starting to learn about different animals or who have an interest in insects.

About the book: 32 pages, hardcover. Published 2026 by Albatross Media. Suggested retail price $16.95.

Have you read?

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