My toddlers don't understand the concept of Valentine's Day, so we made a special Valentine for the person/people we love the most (usually mom and dad). I'm sorry that I don't have many pics, but it gets really crazy at parties, so I think I was doing good to get a picture at all! LOL.
These are easy to make, and the kids had fun making something special for their "Valentine". We actually made handprint heart cards (I'll try to get a picture) to go along with these. To make these flower pot cookie bouquet, first I bought terra cotta pots at Hobby Lobby and painted them red with acrylic paint (spray paint would be nice, but it's too cold here). I bought floral foam and cut small circles with a biscuit cutter about 1-1.5 inch thick. Shove that down in the pot, glue on some shredded paper, and you have your pot. For the cookies, I made sugar cookies from a packet and cut out with a flower shaped cookie cutter. Shove a wooden skewer up in the cookie (I cut mine down to about 8 inches, but don't put the cut side in the cookie if they are the type that splinter - mine were). Bake the cookies and let cool before handling. For the icing, I mixed 1 cup of confectioner's sugar with 3 teaspoons of milk until smooth. Then I added in 1/4 teaspoon vanilla (apparently you can use almond also) and 2 tsp. light corn syrup. You can add more corn syrup if it's too thick. Mine was a little runny. Add in your food coloring and use baking paintbrushes to paint your cookies. We added sprinkles as well. Let them dry and then put them in your flower pot to send home. 
Valentine's Day Paint Stamping
Proudly displaying their teddy bears for a picture!
We finished up our Fairy tale unit yesterday so today we reviewed our Fairy Tales and began preparations for Valentine's Day. We are having a Love Bug themed Valentine's Day party, so we made these cute Ladybug / Love Bug Valentine card holder. Start with two paper plates, and cut one in half (or just above half way) with pinking shears.
Staple the plates together around the edges (food side in). Then have your child(ren) paint the paper plate red. Let that dry. Once it is dry, cut out a black circle (use a small bowl for template), eyes, red hearts, and black dots. Glue the antennas on (I used hot glue for security on these). Have the kids glue on dots and the face and draw a mouth with a white crayon. You can add ribbon hangers by punching holes and tying ribbon to it. Now, you just have to drop their cards in the little pocket.
More to come, but I'll give you a sneak peek. We are going to have LIVE ladybugs at our party. You can order them on ebay and store in the fridge. We will decorate baby food jars for their little homes. We are also going to make a special Valentine gift for the parents using cookie dough and a flower pot. :) 
The Little Red Riding Hood project takes a little more time than the usual craft, so plan ahead if you want to do this one. I got this idea from here: 
We are back in the routine after almost a week out due to an ice storm! (Sorta!) We are continuing our fairytale theme since we missed a few days. Today, we read the story of Cinderella. We continued our centers from last week but added a computer center. It's a slow process, but they are learning to use the computer mouse, and today they got to read an interactive Cinderella story online and follow directions for clicking on things in the story. We also created this glass slipper above. It's a lot cuter in person because the glitter really shines and shimmers. To make this, use the pattern below (right click and save to your computer - print out) and cut out the slipper from wax paper. Glue that to black paper with a watered down glue mixture and spongebrush. Then sponge the glue mixture on the shoe and sprinkle the glitter on - easy peasy!
Next, we worked on name puzzles (name and letter recognition). I have a Silhouette Digital Craft Cutter. I think this is the coolest toy in the world and a necessity. I bought mine for about $149.00 on sale locally, so I am sure they can be found for that price or cheaper. It has so many capabilities, and I only use it for simple stuff - but I still love it. If you don't have this toy, you can do this with MS Word or Publisher. I just typed in the names with an Arial font and printed the outline, and then I cut out the letters with cute paper. I let the kids do this without any help, and I was surprised at how well they did. After they finished, we talked about the letters and the names, and they colored a picture on their papers. 
Next, we had to make some magic wands - Bippity Boppity Boo! These are also easy peasy. I cut out stars (with my Silhouette digital craft cutter - but you can cut by hand - I'm lazy). We used some ribbon from our collage stash, popsicle sticks, glue and glitter. I used the hot glue gun to put the ribbon the sticks, and then they picked their color and glued to the stick, spread a glue/water mixture on the front (less water is better - they curl - see!) and sprinkled on the glitter. Then they let their imaginations run wild turning things into whatever they wanted.
