Valentines Day is just around the corner! And, sadly, in my experience nothing can be more soul-crushing to a kid who hates writing than Valentines Day. Of course, it’s so exciting for them to receive the Valentines, but writing on them? Filling out all those little cards takes a lot of work and care, and sometimes it’s just too much! So this year, to combat that, we’ve started making our valentines a week in advance. This way we can fill out a couple a day, finishing a few days before Valentine’s Day. We’ve also made our Valentines B-I-G so there’s plenty of space to write. When using the store-bought ones I always have to say over and over, “You have to write smaller!” or “You’re going to run out of room!” This will not be a problem this year and Valentines Day will be as it should be: full of love.💗 I’m going to teach you how to make 3 different, easy, kid-friendly cards!

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Supplies (for all three cards):

• Red, white and pink paper or card stock (we tried using both paper and card stock. The paper turned out to be too thin, so we just glued two pieces together and that solved the problem)
• Scissors
• Glue
• Glue Gun (optional, BUT some of our paper was so shiny the hearts wouldn’t stick without a glue gun)
• Markers or crayons
• Cricut (optional. We used the Cricut to cut out the hearts, but you could just cut out hearts, use heart-shaped stickers or even draw them on)
• Tape

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Card 1

1. Using a Cricut cutting machine, scissors or a heart-shaped craft punch cut out 5 different coloured hearts. Our hearts were one inch squared.

2. Glue the hearts onto your paper.

3. Using your marker add strings to make the hearts look like balloons.

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Card 2- The Perfect Toddler Card

1. Cut a heart out of a piece of coloured card stock or construction paper. The cards we made are about 3 inches squared. Cut out a square of white paper that is bigger than the heart.

2. Have your toddlers colour the square as much as they can. “Am I doing a good job, Mummy? Isn’t it beautiful?” [Heart soaring!]

3. Tape the paper behind the heart.

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Card 3:

1. Take your formerly scrap heart from your Toddler Card, put glue on the back and stick it to the front of card stock folded in half.

That’s it. That’s the whole craft. Can it get any easier? No. It can’t. And you’ve reduced waste. Win-win.

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Valentines are the best when kids can actually make them on their own. It’s part of showing the love. They don’t need to be beautiful or intricate, but sometimes simple can be beautiful. And when you’re making 20+ you definitely want your child to be involved from start to finish. If they are too tired after making them to write on them you’ve got a problem. So break it up: make them one day, write on them for several following days, and make sure they’re having fun; sometimes picking a craft below their skill level will enable them to make them more quickly while not losing interest or motivation. And I’m sure they’ll still be proud of their work!

💗Happy Valentines Day!💕