Family Fun & Activities

[afraser217]

My daughter's preschool class is having a class party for Valentine's Day this year.  Does anyone have any ideas on making Valentine's cards, crafts or goodies to give to her classmates in lieu of the store-bought tiny Valentine's day handouts? I figured it could also serve as a good at-home weekend activity!

[KarrieT]

I saw a cute Valentines Day activity for turning old, broken crayons into fun, heart-shaped valentines posted on parenthacks.com right here. It's a great activity to do together - your child can help collect broken crayons and peel the wrappers while the parent slices them into small pieces. Then together, you can decorate the final product and paste the hearts on. It's a good activitiy for talking about recycling, too. 

[ToyaC333]

For very young children who are still developing writing skills, you can consider having them add their own personal touch to valentines by signing their "name" with fingerprint hearts. Using homemade (or store-bought) valentines, have your child "sign" each card by dipping their pointer finger in red stamping ink and making 2 side-by-side fingerprint imprints on the card - like this. The child can also decorate the card with more prints or regular stamps. Sometimes, this is easier than having the child free-hand a design, especially if you have to make cards for a whole classroom of kids!

[Mary]

We actually did KarrieT's suggestion this year.  A few pointers though....  I thought we had a LOT of broken crayons but you actually need quite a bit.  I learned that the hard way because I actually had to go out and buy a box of crayons to finish the project.  That being said, about 24 crayons make 10 hearts.  The 2nd box I bought, I bought the cheaper, non washable crayola crayons.  The non washable ones tend to melt better I found.  Don't leave them in too long or the get a murky coating on top.

My kids helped me take off the wrappers but it was MUCH harder than I remember as a child.  The wrappers would not come off.Somy husband slit each crayon with a swiss army knife before passing the crayons to the kids at the other end of the table.  The first batch I used a knife and cutting board but it did a number on my knife and cutting board.  2nd batch, I let my kids break the crayons and I used a cheaper pair of scissors (to speed it up).  They helped fill up the cups too so it was definitely a joint project. Once complete, I put the crayons into small bags and tied them with ribbon.  I then created a little Valentine's quote "You Color My World __________  Happy Valentine's Day.  Made with love by ______"  I printed them up on circle labels.  The kids put the labels on the bags.  When we were at the last label, my daughter said "Where's Misss _____ and Miss _____ labels"  Ooopss.  Off to buy more crayons - I forgot the teachers - the most important Valentine's!!! 

I have also seen these same hearts stuck on square pieces of paper with a Valentine note.  It is a great project to do with kids with some tweaking.

[GreenMom]

Do you have a Pinterest account? There are millions of ideas on there. We're doing thumbprint hearts attached to pencils w/pipe cleaners.