Valentine's Day Activities

Valentine Word Family Game

January 23, 2017 By Terri Thompson

I love to add a holiday twist to learning games.

It adds to the fun and can help make a reluctant kid eager to learn.

Since Valentine’s Day is coming up, I’m going to share some fun ways to incorporate the holiday into learning. We’ll start with a simple Valentine word family game that makes use of heart doilies.

Get out paper doilies to help practice word families with a fun Valentine Word Family Game. It's a fun Valentine reading game.

Disclosure: This post contains Amazon Affiliate and other affiliate links. Please see my Disclosure Page for more details.

I usually like to stick with supplies that I usually have at home to make a learning game. But, this time I made an exception. I spent a little bit of money on some heart doilies to make a fun activity even more special.

Supplies Needed:

Heart doilies
Red or pink construction paper
Circle punch
Black Marker

Get out paper doilies to help practice word families with a fun Valentine Word Family Game. It's a fun Valentine reading game.

Make your Valentine Word Family Game:

Decide on the word families you want to work on. Choose the ones that your child is working on in class or select something you see they are struggling a bit with. If you’re not sure where to start, here is a great list of word families I refer to quite often.

Use your heart doilies for your word family base. Use the black marker to write a word family on each doily. Don’t do too many, 3 or 4 word families should be plenty.

Next, make your game pieces. I have a circle punch, so I just cut out four circles from my construction paper for each word family. If you don’t have a circle punch, you can cut out small squares or even small hearts.

Write a word on each circle from each word family. I had four circles, so four words for each word family.

An example would be: -est family, nest, rest, test, best.

Get out paper doilies to help practice word families with a fun Valentine Word Family Game. It's a fun Valentine reading game.

Play the game:

Give your child the word family doilies. Turn the paper circles upside down and mix them all up.

Choose a paper circle and read the word. Put the circle on the correct word family doily.

Keep playing until all the paper circles are on the correct doily.

Extend the fun:

Use just the word family doilies and see how many words you can write down for each word family.

Play the game with more than one kid. Have each child take turns turning over a paper circle.

How would you use this Valentine Word Family Game?

Get out paper doilies to help practice word families with a fun Valentine Word Family Game. It's a fun Valentine reading game.

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Get out paper doilies to help practice word families with a fun Valentine Word Family Game. It's a fun Valentine reading game. #Literacy #ReadingGame #ValentinesDay #BetterThanHomework

Simple Valentine Card Making Station for Kids

February 4, 2015 By Terri Thompson

No matter how many creative Valentine’s craft ideas I come up with, a basic Valentine card making station has always been the most popular with my girls.

It’s better than any art project I, or anyone else, can come up with.

Luckily, this is probably the simplest Valentine idea around. Any parent can put together a Valentine card making station. It really is easy.

It’s nothing more than a simple invitation to create with a selection of craft supplies that allows your child to make as many open-ended projects they want. The kids will love it and you will too.

Explore open-ended creativity when you set up a simple Valentine card making station for kids. Grab a few simple supplies and get started crafting. #ValentinesDay #kidscrafts #CreativeFamilyFun

Keep reading to find out all the basics for setting up your own Valentine Card Making Station.

Disclosure: This post contain Amazon Affiliate and other affiliate links. Please see my Disclosure Page for more details.

The Basic Supplies

Construction paper cut to size (I like to cut a piece of paper in half and then fold each of these pieces in half.)
Markers
Crayons
Glue
Scrap paper
Scissors

You really don’t need any more supplies than the basics that I’ve listed. Just leave them out with an invitation to make Valentines. Your kids will take it from there.

Extra Supplies

If you want to mix it up, add any or all of these extra supplies to your card making station.

Decorative scissors
Glitter
Glitter glue
Heart stamps and stamp pads
Heart doilies
Valentine stickers

(Not Pictured)

Paper punches
Heart stencils or heart cookie cutters to trace
Fabric scraps
Buttons
Or anything else you may find among your craft supplies

Create with your Valentine Card Making Station

When I first pulled all the supplies out, my girls were so excited.

I purposely don’t leave any examples out because I wanted them to create whatever they wanted.

They spent an entire afternoon cutting, glitter gluing, and writing.

My oldest (2nd grader) even worked hard trying to come up with clever Valentine puns for her cards. My favorite was, “I flutter by to wish you a happy Valentine’s Day,” surrounded by butterfly stickers.

This open-ended Valentine station is always popular at our house.

We’ve got plans to pull it out several more times before Valentine’s Day.

Since I don’t have a space where we can leave the supplies out all the time, I found a basket that easily holds everything. It takes very little effort to pack up the supplies and the girls can easily get them out the next time they create.

If you’re looking for a fun Valentine’s activity for kids, set up a simple Valentine card making station. It’s a fun, creative activity to do together with the kids.

Valentine Negative Space Art

February 2, 2015 By Terri Thompson

I don’t think we’ve ever let Valentine’s Day pass without doing a ton of craft projects. And, this year is no exception. For this project, we played around with the concept of negative space, which is the space around and between an object, to make these pretty Valentine’s paintings.

Disclosure: There are Amazon Affiliate and other affiliate links in this article which means, at no additional cost to you, we could receive compensation for our recommendations. You can read our full disclosure policy on our Disclosure Page for more details.

Supplies Needed:

Thin cardboard

Drawing paper

Pink and red paint

Cotton swabs

Before we began the project, I cut several heart shapes from a recycled cereal box. I cut a few different sizes, so we had many to choose from.

Next, I told the girls we were going to make heart shapes by painting around our stencils. And, to add a fun twist to the project, we used our cotton swabs to paint dots.

The process was easy and they didn’t need much explanation afterwards. We did find that the heart shape was much more apparent if we did a row of dots that overlapped the edge of the cardboard. After that, we used our own creativity to create our heart pictures.

It was so much fun to lift up the stencils and see the heart shapes left behind!

If you’re looking for a fun and easy Valentine’s project, this would be perfect. The supplies are minimal and the possibilities are endless.

10 Ways to Play This Weekend ~ All About Valentine’s Day

February 7, 2014 By Terri Thompson

I don’t know how things are at your house, but around here we’ve been knee deep in Valentine’s crafts and activities.

It’s quite possibly one of our favorite holidays for crafting and decorating.

Here are 10 Valentine’s activities I’ve found recently that would be perfect for some weekend fun.

Which one do you want to try?

Make animal out of hearts. Housing A Forest shows you how to make 7 different heart animals. (We’ve already made 3 and have plans to make all 7!)

Have fun painting with Conversation Heart Sensory Paint with Frogs, Snails, and Puppy Dog Tails.

Play with Cinnamon Heart Cloud Dough at And Next Comes L.

Do some Valentine’s Day Yoga with Kid Yoga Stories.

Make some mini sensory bin Valentines to give to your friends with Life Lesson Plans.

Make a string heart heart with How Wee Learn.

Do a Heart Tissue Paper by Number with Crayon Box Chronicles.

Conduct a Valentine potion and tasting experiment with Inspiration Laboratories.

Make salt dough heart magnets with The Connections We Share.

Make tin-foil and tissue paper hearts with Happy Hooligans.

And if you’re still looking for more activities, you can find all of our Valentine’s projects at this link.

How are you going to play this weekend?

Beaded Heart Pencil Toppers

February 6, 2014 By Terri Thompson

*Disclosure: CraftProjectIdeas.com provided most of the supplies used in this project. Project idea and opinions are my own. There are Amazon Affiliate and other affiliate links in this article which means, at no additional cost to you, we could receive compensation for our recommendations. You can read our full disclosure policy on our Disclosure Page for more details.

This year, we don’t have to worry about classroom Valentine’s. My daughter’s 1st grade class is working on them in school for a writing project. (I love this!)

But, if we did, we would have made even more of these fun beaded heart pencil toppers.

Add a simple gift tag and they’re ready to hand out to classmates – no candy required.

Supplies Needed:

Pencils
Fuzzy sticks/pipe cleaners
Variety of beads
Scissors & card stock (for gift tags)

To start the process, wrap one end of your fuzzy stick around the pencil. Wrap it around tight enough that it doesn’t slide up and down by itself.

Next start beading. We had a variety of beads: pony beads, tri-beads, fun star beads, and silver letter beads. The type of bead doesn’t matter, so use whatever you think looks best.

Keep beading until you are left with a long enough section of your pipe cleaner to wrap around your pencil again (at least 2 inches). I bent my stick in the shape of a heart before beading so I could see how my pattern was going. This step is not necessary.

We made patterns with our beads. We even spelled a few Valentine’s words, like “love” and “xoxo”, on a few. It would be fun to spell out classmates names!

Once you are finished beading, wrap the other end of your fuzzy stick around your pencil at the same place as you began. Overlap the initial wrapping so that the two ends stay together.

Shape your beaded stick into a heart. Pull the heart down so that the entire shape rests against your pencil. We left ours like this, but if you want to add a bit of stability, cut a small piece of pipe cleaner and secure the top bent section of your heart to the pencil.

Wouldn’t these make a perfect classroom Valentine? What are your kids handing out this year?

Valentine's Day Activities