Looking for a valentine craft for preschoolers that is both cute and fun to make? Then you are in the right place. Well, assuming you don’t mind cleaning up a bit of a mess. But, I promise that it’s worth it. I made these fun rice heart valentines with my 3 and 4 year olds this morning and we all had a lot of fun. Learn how to make them with your own kids below.
How to Make a Valentine Craft for Preschoolers
Materials:
- White cardstock
- School glue
- Colored rice (learn how to make here)
- Paint (optional)
- Dot markers (optional, learn how to make here)
Choosing Your Materials:
You have a couple options on how to make this craft. First, you can use colored rice and white cardstock like we did. You can make your colored rice or buy it. It is really easy and fun to dye rice, but it does take a while to dry. Second, you can use plain white rice and colored cardstock. Lastly, you can use some other material like confetti or if you are really brave glitter. If you use something different, I would love to hear about how it went in the comments.
Making Your Pattern:
To start, make your pattern on your piece of white cardstock with school glue. Draw a heart with the glue as big as possible in the middle of your page. Then, fill in the outside with more glue.
We each made two valentine crafts and my kids asked me to make a heart on one of them and they did their own thing on the other. They filled in the outside with glue on both of theirs.
Here is what ours looked like after we were all done gluing our patterns:
Throwing Your Rice:
Now comes the fun part! Put your pieces of paper on the floor, and throw rice at them. It will make a mess, but it is a lot of fun. And not just for the kids. I found the sound of rice hitting the floor and watching it bounce around very satisfying.
Here is what ours looked like after we finished throwing rice:
Once you are done throwing rice, carefully shake your paper over the trash can. This lets all the rice that isn’t stuck to the glue to fall off. Then, set them aside and get cleaning.
Cleaning Up:
Next, clean up your giant mess. This is an obvious step, but I wanted to include it to point out that it can be part of the fun. We took turns using a mini broom and dustpan, a stick vacuum, and a big broom to get all the rice off the floor. The kids had almost as much fun sweeping and vacuuming it all up as they did throwing it.
Decorating More:
At this point, you can be done with your valentine craft for preschoolers. I thought we were done at this point. But, you can also continue decorating them. My 4 year old daughter asked if she could paint hers and my 3 year old son asked if he could use dot markers on his. I had no reason to say no and so they continued making their craft even more fun and colorful. I liked how mine looked, so I left it plain.
And here is our finished valentine craft for preschoolers:
Conclusion of Making a Valentine Craft for Preschoolers
We all had so much fun making these Valentine’s Day crafts. And I love when my kids take one of my crafts and continue being creative with it. So, I am happy they decided to use their imaginations to continue decorating them. The mess would have been a pain to clean up, but with my kids helping it ended up being fun as well. How did your valentine crafts turn out?
