Valentine's Crafts for Toddlers

Valentine's Day is just around the corner, here are some great ideas to use with your little ones.

Try making Valentine's sun catchers with little ones. You will need some regular Elmer's glue and red food coloring, as well as some waxed paper.

Simply tint the glue with red food coloring until it reaches a desired color. Design heart shapes on the wax paper with little ones. The shapes can either be filled or not. When the glue dries they can be hung in the window.

Another idea for Valentine's Day is to make footprint cards. By dipping little feet in white tempera paint and stamping onto red paper, you'll have a very unique heart shape. Stamp the feet one at a time and make sure the heels of each print touch one another. The very personal valentine can then be decorated by the little ones. Thumbs doubled up can also make very unique heart designs on the paper.

Help the children write Happy Valentine's Day, or I love you with my whole heart, on the card.

Face painting is also a fun way to celebrate Valentine's Day. Children love to have their faces painted, so by adding a heart or a little cupid to their cheek the day will be even more special.

You can also make special Valentine's cookies by baking regular sugar cookie dough in heart shapes. Cut out the middle of the cookie using a bottle cap and fill it with crushed candy, such as lifesavers. The cookie will bake around the cookie giving it a stain glassed cookie effect.

Little ones can also make some very cute crafts for Valentine's Day by using wire or pipe cleaner, scissors, pliers and beads.

Just snip a length of the wire and bend it into a heart of V shape. String on the beads, using heart shaped beads or alphabet beads to spell "I Love You."

Finish by bending the wire into a heart and twist the ends together with the pliers. The hearts can then be hung on the fridge, on a necklace or pinned to a jacket pocket.

Another fun way to help little ones see Valentine's Day through "rose-colored" glasses is by making fun heart shaped glasses.

You'll need various colors of pipe cleaner and pink and red foam. Simply draw a heart about 2& 1'2" wide on the foam and trace the heart so that you have two identical hearts. You will also need to cut out hearts from the inside so that the hearts are hollow with about a ½'' frame.

Connect the hearts using pipe cleaner by poking it through the foam, you could also use glue for this process.

For even more Valentine's fun, cut the end off of a business envelope to give the glasses their own storage case. Decorate the envelope with a special Valentine's message.

Another fun Valentine's Craft involves some bendable wire, nails, and a block of wood, red or pink paint, some old magazines, a scissors, and some Modge Podge glue.

Brush the sanded block of wood with red, white, or pink paint and let it dry. Then nail in about five or six nails in a heart shape. Use the adjustable wire to wind around and weave through the nails to make a heart shape. Cut letters from the magazine to write a conversation heart, such as "I Love You" or "Be Mine".

Use Modge Podge to permanently set the letters on the wood. You can also adjust the wire to form an arrow and weave it through the wire heart.

Another craft that little ones are sure to enjoy is Valentine's Finger Puppets. These are no ordinary Finger Puppets. They require card stock, a hole punch, scissors, markers, glue, googly eyes and a little creativity.

Cut a heart with the card stock or heavy construction paper. Then punch a starter hole for each finger with the whole punch. Use a pair of scissors to enlarge each circle so that the child's fingers will fig snugly through the two holes. Place the holes at the bottom of the heart on either side of the V. The child's two fingers will serve as legs for the heart.

Decorate the hearts with googly eyes and a smiley face and whatever patterns around the heart you and your child can think of.