Valentine’s Day crafts are great ways to introduce fun educational content to kids. As your kids create and enjoy the crafts, they don’t even realize they are learning. Here are 7 educational Valentine’s Day crafts for kids!
#1 Make Robot Mailboxes
Making boxes to put your Valentine gifts into is a timeless craft that kids love. This year, make it a little different and a little more educational. Instead of making an ordinary mailbox, make a robot mailbox. The new STEM learning incorporates science, technology, engineering, and mathematics all of which can be used to make a robot. Here’s what you need:
- Kleenex boxes
- Googly eyes
- Toilet paper or paper towel rolls
- Construction paper
- Crayons, pencils, and markers
- Anything your kids could use to make a robot
#2 Make a Love Chain
A great way to get your kids working on fine motor skills, using vocabulary and writing skills are to make a love chain. Cut out strips of white, red, and pink construction paper. Have the kids write in complete sentences things that they love such as: “I love mom and dad” or “I love my new room.” You can then attach the strips together in a chain to hang on the wall, or you can transform them into heart chains. Here is how you do it:
- Fold your strip in half.
- Grab both ends and fold inward to create the shape of a heart.
- Staple the ends together.
- Repeat the process linking each strip to the previous heart.
#3 Make Poem Valentine’s Day Cards
Store bought cards may be easier to throw a name on, but if you want a little educational twist in your child’s card giving, have them make an Acrostic poem for their loved ones. They can use the person’s name they are making the card for to tell something special about that person. Not only do they learn different literary forms, but they are working on vocabulary, handwriting, and reading skills. If you have older kids, you can have them look up synonyms to boring words like “caring” in the thesaurus to make words like “considerate” Here’s an example:
- Marvelous
- Outstanding
- Magnificent
#4 Make a Flower for Mom
Flowers are the perfect symbol for Valentine’s Day gifts and are a fun craft for kids. However, there are so many educational ideas you can add to making a flower. What are the parts of a flower? Depending on the age of the child, you can have them make a flower with all its parts including roots, petals, stamen, stem, and leaves. Explain that plants are made up of different parts just like people. Each part has a specific function and just like we want to give all our love to mom, we need to give all the parts of a flower to our flower to mom.
- The leaves use sunlight to turn carbon dioxide into the air that we breathe and food for the flower.
- Roots help suck up the water.
- Stems allow the water that is absorbed by the roots to travel to the leaves of the flower.
- The flower may look beautiful, but it is very important in producing seeds so we have more flowers. Female flowers have a pistil in the center and male flowers have a stamen.
#5 Conversation Heart Craft
Conversational hearts are great ways to teach your kids how to read, develop sentences, and use fine motor skills. Make Valentine’s letter using conversational hearts. Another fun activity is to put conversational hearts into Mad Libs Valentine’s stories. Use a hot glue gun to glue your conversational hearts to your story. Let your kids eat the ones they don’t use.
#6 Make Puzzles
Puzzles are great for fine motor skills, reasoning, spatial skills, and problem-solving skills. Valentine’s Day makes the perfect time to create your own special puzzles. There are several ways you can create Valentine’s Day puzzles. Here are two ways:
- Make a Starburst puzzle. Use 9 pieces of starburst candy and a small heart shaped picture (the pictures should cover all 9 starbursts when put on top). Cut the picture into little starburst squares. Glue your pieces on top of the starburst candy. When kids have completed their puzzle, they can eat the starburst.
- Make a puzzle from cardboard. Have kids glue a Valentine’s Day picture that they have colored onto a piece of cardboard. Once the glue has dried, flip your picture over and cut out various shapes to create the pieces of your puzzle.
#7 Make Your Own Conversational Hearts
Writing, reading, and creativity has never been so fun. Have kids make hearts out of construction paper, and write their own conversational hearts using sayings they would say to specific foods, candy, or characters. Here are a few examples:
- Hershey kisses: pucker up butter cup
- Lucky Charms: I’m lucky to have you
- Shovel: I really dig you
- Socks: We make the perfect pair
Need more ideas? Check out these Valentine’s Day STEM activities too!
