In addition to the delicious Valentine's Day Goodies we had at our Valentine’s party yesterday, I also got Sugarplum back in her Halloween costume (which I vowed to do months ago after I was Done and Down). She actually spent more time in her costume for the Valentine’s party than she did on Halloween, even wearing it to pick Honeybun up from school when we forgot to change before it was too late. She “flew” almost all the way to school, running and flapping her arms down the sidewalk!
Aside from a reason to get together with friends, the idea behind our party was to make cute Valentine’s Day crafts. We had planned to do the same at Christmas time but everyone had to cancel at the last minute so I promised Sugarplum we would do Valentine’s Day. We had a small crowd (4 other mommies and 5 kids) and the mommies did a lot of the crafting but we had a great time nonetheless.
I didn’t know what the age group would be as I invited a large community group of mommies I’m a part of. Finding toddler appropriate crafts for Valentine’s Day proved a little tricky but I found a few great ideas that we all had fun with.
The first we did, which the kids were fully involved with and enjoyed, were paper plate shakers. The adults cut a heart shape into one paper plate and then the kids colored it and another. When they were done coloring, we taped cellophane wrap over the heart cut out and stapled the plates together (you could also use tape or glue if your child can be patient while it dries) leaving a small opening. The kids then dropped in some beads and confetti and we sealed up the last little bit to make a not-too-noisy Valentine’s Day instrument which they loved dancing around with!
The second craft was harder for the kids than I expected. I took some plastic canvas and cut heart shapes, making sure to have rough edges. We then took variegated yarn and had the kids wrap the yarn around the heart shape. I found it easiest to pull the end of the yarn through one of the holes in the plastic to hold it while the child wrapped. Some of the littler ones had trouble keeping the yarn pulled tight as they wrapped it but the hearts came out so cute and I can’t wait to find a place to hang up Sugarplum’s!
The last craft was tissue paper suncatchers. We cut a heart frame out of red construction paper and a heart out of clear contact paper then the kids placed small squares of tissue paper all over the contact paper to make a cute little suncatcher!
