Happy Father’s day to all you great dads out there! Several weeks ago, my one year old son and three year old daughter made their dad a Shrinky Dink frame for Father’s day. I was feeling ahead of the game until it still snuck up on me and we hadn’t made anything for the grandpas. We are only going to see one of them soon, so we needed to make something that we could mail. The obvious choice was to make homemade Father’s Day cards. But, it still took me several days to think of a design that both my kids could help with.
The hardest part to figure out was what my one year old could do. I found inspiration from a tie-dye paper towel t-shirt craft from Happy Hooligans. After more time racking my brain, I decided that my three year old could probably trace some writing and my one year old could tie dye a heart shape. We made these super cute cards for Father’s Day. They would also work great for a birthday or any occasion you give cards for.
How a 1 Year Old and 3 Year Old Can Make Father’s Day Cards
Materials:
- Printer Paper
- Cardstock
- Paper Towel
- Dropper
- Food dye or watercolors
- Plastic tablecloth (optional)
3 Year Old Writing the Card:
The first thing I did was experiment to see how well my daughter could trace. We have done several activities that involve tracing with glue lately like salt painting and making window clings. She has done good enough with those that I was pretty certain she could trace letters with a pen. She has a dry erase learn to write your numbers book that up until now she has just read. I showed her how to trace the numbers and letters in it. Besides being an instant hit, she did a good job so the rest of the craft was a go.
Then, I wrote out what I wanted her trace on a piece of cardstock. I wrote “WE” for all three followed by “DADDY”, “GRANDPA”, or “GRUMPY” underneath. Yes, my dad is known as Grumpy to the grandkids. It started out as a joke, but quickly caught on. Now two grandkids can say it, so it’s not changing anytime soon. I made the mistake of writing on both sides of the paper to save space. This came back to bite me later.
Next, I taped up the piece of cardstock covered by a piece of printer paper on the back door. I wanted the sun to help my daughter see what she was tracing. Then, I gave my daughter a pen and she immediately started circling the first letter. After a quick reminder on how to trace and switching the pen with a purple marker, my daughter was off to the races. She did a really good job with the first one. Then the next two weren’t quite as legible, but they were the ones that had writing on both sides of my template. I think she was trying to trace a bit of both sides.
1 Year Old Tie-Dyeing the Heart:
To make my daughter’s words make sense, my one year old son made a tie-dye paper towel heart. I actually had this idea and then we went to the library where they happened to have a dropper activity. So my son got lots of unexpected practice using a dropper.
To make his heart, we needed a dropper, a paper towel, and three cups of colored water. If you have watercolors you can use those, but we mixed food dye with a little water in a small paper cup. We learned our lesson from our salt painting craft and used a lot less water to make the colors bolder. My son helped me mix all the colors. We placed everything on a plastic tablecloth to minimize mess potential. I should have also changed my son’s clothes since he did get a little bit of yellow on him.
Once we had everything prepped, my son went to work. With my help, he sucked up the dye into the dropper and then dropped a couple spots onto the paper towel. He mostly banged it on the paper towel when I wasn’t helping. We switched between colors until we colored the entire paper towel.
Then, we had to let the paper towels dry. I used a hairdryer to speed it up.
Putting the Homemade Father’s Day Cards Together:
Now it was time to put all the parts and pieces my kids had made together. First, I cut a piece of cardstock in half and folded it in half. This formed the card.
Then, I cut out the words that my daughter had traced. She came and helped me glue them on the front of the card with a glue stick.
Once my son’s hearts were dry, I traced a heart shape onto the paper towel three times and cut them all out. I’m not sure if it was entirely from using the hairdryer, but the two halves of the paper towel separated while we were drying them. So, we just used one ply of the paper towel. Then, I helped my son glue his hearts on the cards between the strips of words.
The cards were now finished, but the insides were blank. I asked my daughter what her favorite thing was about each of the men and wrote that inside of the card. I had to laugh when she said she loved that Grumpy threw her in the air and then right afterwards said that she loved that Daddy threw her higher in the air. Then I had her “sign” below what I had written. I did the same thing with my son except, I wrote down his non-word sounds since he doesn’t have words yet.
Conclusion of Our Homemade Father’s Day Cards From Kids and Grandkids
I think that these cards turned out super cute. You can definitely tell what they say, which is really cool. And I think the tie-dye hearts are really fun. My daughter thought so too and had to tie-dye her own paper towel immediately after I finished with my son. I am confident that my husband and the grandpas are going to love their cards. Once again, happy Father’s Day! What is the cutest card your kids have made their dads?
