With February upon us, it’s that time of year when children are given the opportunity to show signs of kindness to their loved ones and their classmates through the creation of Valentine’s Day crafts. If you are a parent of a preschooler or a preschool teacher looking for easy and fun Valentine’s Day crafts for preschoolers, our Raleigh child development professionals are here to help guide you.
Preparing for Valentine’s Day Crafts for Preschoolers
We believe when it comes to Valentine’s Day crafts for preschoolers, it’s best to keep things simple, straightforward, and focused on just a few materials that can be utilized in a relatively short time frame.
We want children to feel the accomplishment of finishing a craft to their liking. Giving preschool children too much time or too many materials can become distracting or overwhelming to them. However, if your preschooler enjoys crafts, feel free to incorporate additional materials to allow their creativity to flourish, especially as they age a little.
Here are some suggestions for materials and supplies for making Valentine’s Day crafts for preschoolers:
- Construction paper
- Crafting foam and felt
- Tissue paper
- Colored markers and crayons
- Scissors
- Glue
- Hole puncher
- Glitter
- Rhinestones
- Confetti
- Stickers
- Lace or mesh
- Foil
- Feathers
- Fake or real flowers/flower petals
- Ribbons
- Heart-shaped candy
- Pipe cleaners
- Unfinished wood hearts
- Stamps
Valentine’s Day Crafts for Preschoolers Using Markers and Glitter
Simple, easy, and fun Valentine’s Day crafts for preschoolers really do not need much more than paper, markers, and sparkly adornments in a variety of fun colors.
Paper Hearts
Creating paper hearts gives preschool-aged children endless opportunities to show off their creativity. Simply cut out hearts from different colors of construction paper or crafting foam, and have a combination of different types of materials for decoration.
From markers, glitter glue, heart-shaped candies, Valentine-themed confetti, glitter, and rhinestones, your child will be able to create as many paper hearts as they desire. You can further enrich the activity by punching a hole at the top of each heart. Then, using ribbon or string, create a Valentine’s Day garland out of all the paper heart creations.
Heart Crowns
Preschool children love activities that include fantasy play and dressing up. With just a few supplies, you can help your child make a paper heart crown for themselves. Using a strip of construction paper measured to fit the top of his or her head, have your child draw and decorate the paper band, adorning it with glitter, rhinestones, pieces of heart-shaped felt, pipe cleaners, and any other materials of their choosing. You can secure the crown onto them by gluing each end together or fastening it with a paperclip or hairpin.
Flower Petal Wands
Using heart-cut pieces of construction paper, your child can create a bouquet of flower petals or one single flower out of multi-colored, heart-shaped paper cuttings. Pasting the heart shapes to form flower patterns is a fun and easy valentine’s day craft for preschoolers. With the use of multiple different colors of paper, markers, glitter, and gemstones, they can make the freestanding flowers or bouquets as colorful and vibrant as they please. When finished with the flower, secure a green or brown colored pipe cleaner (or several if making a bouquet) to the petals with glue and even tie a pretty ribbon around it to finish.
Valentine’s Day Crafts Using Paint
Preschoolers love to get their hands messy by using paint to create fun and easy Valentine’s Day crafts. Below are some fun ways your child can use paint to create a cute Valentine’s Day craft. It might be messy, but it’s worth the fun! Parents, we suggest laying down several layers of newspaper and lending your child an old t-shirt to minimize the mess and make clean-up easy. Or, if it’s a warm, sunny day, you can help your child make these crafts outside!
Hand Print Trees or Flowers
Have your child place their hand into red, pink, or purple paint and stamp their handprint onto white paper. Repeat several times in the same or different colors. Next, cut out the pieces of their handprints and paste them onto a piece of construction paper, drawing a flower stem or tree branches that the painted handprints are blooming out of.
Heart-Shaped Blot Art
A simple yet effective Valentine’s Day craft for preschoolers is heart-shaped blot art. Using large heart-shaped cutouts of construction paper, fold the paper in half. Opening the paper, your preschooler will paint on only one side of the center crease, choosing whatever colors and designs they want. Next, again fold the paper in half, creating a blotted art stamped onto both sides of the crease.
Wooden Heart Ornaments
Many craft stores have various shapes of wooden heart cutouts that can be used to make ornaments to hang around the house any time of year. They can also be put on the Christmas tree come December. Your preschooler can paint these slim wooden heart pieces in different colors, either with their fingers or a paintbrush. They can additionally decorate the wooden hearts with glued-on rhinestones, glitter, or other festive decorations. Attach string to the top, and you have a homemade ornament for Valentine’s Day.
Valentine’s Day Crafts You Can Use to Decorate the House
Displaying your preschooler’s artwork is one way to validate their ideas and creativity. Having them create fun Valentine’s Day crafts that can be gifted to the other parent, a sibling, or just as a gift to the household as a whole is a fantastic way to encourage pride in the crafts they create.
Picture Frames
Print out a picture of the family, the family pet, or your child with their parent, sibling, or friend. Using crafting foam, cut out a frame for the picture. Then, your preschooler can decorate the frame by creating a three-dimensional, textured design with paper heart-cut outs, gems, glitter, lace, foil, or other embellishments. Glue or tape the outer edges of the picture to the backside of the decorated Valentine’s Day frame, and post it on the wall or refrigerator.
Rainbow Heart Suncatchers
Using small pieces of various colored tissue paper, the pieces can be glued together on top of a single sheet of wax paper. It’s important to use paper that is transparent so that when displayed in the window the sun will reflect off the colors of the tissue paper and through the wax paper itself. Using a small paintbrush and paste, the tissue pieces can be layered on top of one another. The finished design can then be cut into a heart shape, either on its own or with a paper border added, and displayed in a window or on a glass door to catch the sunlight.
Valentine’s Day Crafts Your Preschooler Can Share at School
Valentine’s Day is usually celebrated in preschool classrooms. While the focus of the holiday is not on romance, it’s usually built around the ideas of friendship, generosity, and kindness. Because of this, oftentimes parents will be asked to have their preschooler bring something to school to share with the class.
Valentine’s Day Boxes
A great way to collect all the Valentine’s Day cards shared in the preschool classroom is to decorate a DIY keepsake box or mailbox for classmates to put cards into one another’s boxes. This is a great classroom activity to collect all the homemade or store-bought cards that children will inevitably collect on Valentine’s Day.
Using an upcycled cardboard box, cut a mail slot in the top. Using any combination of crafting materials, your child or student can create their Valentine’s Day-themed box for any candy or card collections they receive from friends and classmates. Decorated with felt hearts, rhinestones, glitter, stickers, confetti, lace, and ribbons, the box can be as simple or as intricate as the preschooler chooses.
Valentine’s Day Cookies
Before bringing any baked goods into the classroom, be sure to check with your child’s preschool teachers to ensure there are no children with allergies to any ingredients. If you are in the clear, making homemade sugar cookies and having your preschooler decorate them with Valentine’s Day candy and icing in pink and red is a great treat that can be shared among the class while doubling as a fun family crafting activity.
The Message of Valentine’s Day Crafts for Preschoolers
With Valentine’s Day crafts for preschoolers, we often focus on the act of giving and kindness rather than the more complex emotions of love and affection. This can be done by encouraging your preschooler to present a crafty creation to a parent, sibling, friend, or another person of the child’s choosing as a sign of kindness and appreciation.
When children are between the ages of three to five years old, it’s important to teach them boundaries and not to make them feel forced to show signs of affection toward people they do not want to. Focusing on acts of kindness when you discuss Valentine’s Day with preschoolers rather than on the sentiment of love allows children to feel safe, have agency over their actions, and understand there is more to life than romance.
Another way to redirect the traditional concept of Valentine’s Day being linked to romantic love or admiration of another person is to encourage preschool-aged children to celebrate themselves through their Valentine’s Day artwork. Suggesting they make a craft to hang on their bedroom wall, sit on their dresser, or keep in a scrapbook for themselves is a good approach to instilling confidence and self-value in preschool-aged kids throughout Valentine’s Day activities.
Happy Valentine’s Day from Primary Beginnings Preschool!
If your child is preschool aged and you are looking for a childcare development center that focuses on inclusiveness, enrichment activities, and learning opportunities, Primary Beginnings would love for you to schedule a visit to one of our locations.
Contact us today to request a tour of either our North Hills or Spring Forest preschools in North Raleigh. Call our North Hills Drive location at 919-785-0303 or our Spring Forest location at 919-790-6888. Or, you can get started by filling out our contact form below.
