Making Valentines
Number one on my task list this week: making Valentines with my kids. You too? But first, I'm going to scour the interwebs for ideas. Olive really wants to give out candy so I think we'll go with these beautiful chocolate bar wrappers from Benign Objects (they offer tea wrap templates as well — perfect for your child's teacher!).
If you're looking for ideas, here are three of the most successful Valentines we've made in year's past:
1) Mad Libs (our most popular — a real hit for 3rd, 4th and 5th graders)
2) Friendship Bracelets
3) Bookmarks
Other fun ideas from my archives:
1) Japanese lollipop tags
2) Little apple pies for your sweetie pies
3) Mini treat boxes (from Inchmark)
This is the first year that Ralph won't be exchanging valentines with his classmates (sigh. middle school.) but I told Ralph if there was someone special he wanted to recognize we would come up with a good gift. I remember my brother giving his 6th grade sweetheart a goldfish for Valentine's Day. Adorable.
What will you be making for Valentine's Day? Any fantastic ideas I might have missed?
Labels: holidays
posted by Gabrielle of Design Mom at Monday, February 08, 2010
19 Comments:
I made "secret message" valentines for my nieces and nephews. They were a lot of work but I think the kids will love them! My mother-in-law will be giving the valentines to the kids this week. I can't wait to hear about their reactions.
http://www.marthastewart.com/article/valentines-day-secret-messages?backto=true
These are great ideas! I think my daughter will love making bracelets....not so sure about my son. any cool ideas for 6 year old boy valentine's?
Rats - the bookmarks link is broken. We had looked at it last year and my daughter wanted to make them (we made lollipop holders and my son made MadLibs, which we will do again). Do you have any old pics of yours?
These are great ideas! This will be our first year giving out v-day cards. Since we've been burried under snow all weekend I didn't get a chance to shop. Hoping to make it to the dollar aisle at Target and Michaels and pull together something before friday.
We made swirly crayons for my three-year-old son's class. Chop up Crayolas, put pieces in a mini muffin tin, bake 10 minutes at 150.
Then we used foam sticky dots to attach the crayons to a card. We drew a few lines on the card to indicate balloon strings. One "balloon" was the swirly crayon and the other "balloons" were circles cut from colored paper. One circle said "Have a colorful Valentine's Day!" and the other was my son's signature (writ large, scanned in and shrunk) -- with "your friend, [Son's Name]" typed below, in case you aren't his mother and can't read his handwriting. :) We even put two tiny hole punches on either side of the "strings" we drew and tied a little ribbon around the bottom. SO stinking cute, and a lot of it is stuff a three-year-old can do. (Put crayon bits in muffin tins, attach crayons and dots to card, etc.)
Hi Gabby,
I made homemade marshmallows this weekend and think kids would love it as much as adults: it's quick and a little magical, and easy to package them up as valentines:
http://www.makegrowgather.com/posts/2010/2/8/lovemallows.html
Can't wait to see what you come up with!
Katie! Those secret message valentines are adorable. Your nieces and nephews will love them.
Trish, Carrie's suggestion of swirly crayons is a great idea for a 6 year old boy. Here's a link when I made them: http://www.designmom.com/2006/08/recycled-crayons.html
Lisa, sorry about that. The bookmark link should work now.
SAJ, have fun in the snow!
Carrie, such a cute idea! Thanks for sharing.
Kelly, off to check out your marshmellows.
We made heart shaped crayons for my preschooler's party. I still need to come up with something for my daughter's Kindy class though. Thanks for the ideas!
http://kelliebrown.blogspot.com/2010/02/greening-valentines.html
Wow, these are some great ideas! I love the apple pie idea. So so cute. I have found TONS of great Valentine's Day ideas this year... here are a few of them:
http://www.mrspottsthoughts.com/2010/02/valentine-crafts-treats-to-make.html
http://www.mrspottsthoughts.com/2010/01/love-notes-round-two.html
http://www.mrspottsthoughts.com/2010/01/valentines-day.html-
There are a ton more if you scroll through my blog, but those are my three favorite posts. :) Happy Heart Day!
i love the candy wrappers! the paper is wonderful!hope you had a great time on the slopes!
A couple of years ago my son and I made these valentines and they were a big hit at his preschool:
http://familyfun.go.com/crafts/guppy-love-669996/
I think we'll be making them again with my daughter.
I did the MAD LIBS idea this year and they look so super cool! For the tags I used those old red SOLD signs with silver ink (My son wrote all his friends names) He was soooo into this idea too because he loves MAD LIBS and there are so many different kinds now! Thanks again for this idea!!
I made these 3 years ago, and then again last year. They've been very popular. And they're fabulously easy!
http://24-7-365.blogspot.com/2009/02/lavish-me-with-praise.html
You are perfect inspiration Gabrielle! I just ordered the candy-bar wrappers...love your blog forever!
love mix (diy trail mix with valentine m&ms thrown in). sassypiggy.blogspot.com. we haven't entered classmate phase of life yet, but like to make valentine's day special in little ways.
Those are all really great ideas, but there is something so fun about the simplicity of taking my four kids to the grocery store and letting them chose from the assortment of commercial/tacky valentines. They all seemed pretty happy with their choices and we were done assembling them in less than an hour. Also, I wonder how a parent with a 7 year old boy could convince him of anything else beside a SpongeBob or Lego Valentine?
I love the recycled crayon idea! We (me) didn't feel like taking on a huge project for this year's Vday cards, so I bought printable designs from Etsy, punched holes at the top, and tied to lollipops with red ribbon. They look adorable! These are the cards I bought:
http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=40365456
http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=39967591
Kidlet 1 is giving out the finger puppet cards, and Kidlet 2 is using the folding ones. Next year they'll switch, so we get a little extra mileage out of these!
I usually make gobs of Valentines from the larger-than-life paintings my children create...better to re-use them than toss, I think, and when cut as folded hearts they are pretty darling-random button glued on here or there. This year I unearthed a stash of old Barbie clothes and used the material to create ultra-frilly tongue-in-cheek Valentines with my 4-yr old, sweet Winnie. More details here: http://otherpeopleschicken.blogspot.com/2010/02/love-and-recycling.html
I did the mini treat boxes from Inchmark and they turned out super cute! Thanks bunches for the link, I've added inchmark to my favorites!
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