Recommended Age Group: 2.5 Years +

Materials Required:

• White Paper
• Red Paper
• Pink Paper
• Glue
• Colors

Instructions:

The craft is the perfect combination of artistic yet messy that appeal to kids of all ages, and the final product will put a smile on your face this Valentine’s Day. Older children can complete this craft on their own while younger ones will need a bit of assistance.

Choose the background color of your card – it can be white, pink or red. Place that piece of paper aside.

Carefully rip up the other two pieces of paper until you have pieces that are close to the size of your child’s fist or smaller. Older children may try to tear the paper into shapes such as a heart, but even randomly torn pieces look great on this card.

Make two piles of your torn pieces and pull over your set aside paper for the card itself. Lightly cover the outside of the card with glue for your child and let her paste the torn pieces all over the paper. The closer together the pieces are, the more interesting the card will appear. Overlapping pieces are wonderful.

When the glue is dry, fold the card in half and help your child write a special message inside. If you have stickers or a particularly artistic child, you might let her spend some time decorating the inside of the card however she pleases. Then, let your child deliver the card to that special someone, perhaps along with some fresh baked cookies or a small package of candy.

Finally a craft that can blend into your décor! The wax paper lamp is a fun yet beautiful activity to do together with your child.

Roll out a length of wax paper and lay it flat on your work surface. Arrange four craft sticks into a square at one corner of the wax paper. Glue the craft sticks to each other to build a frame, and then glue the paper to the sticks. Make three more frames and glue your wax paper to those frames as well. You should have four squares of craft sticks glued next to each other across the wax paper.

Children love to make fingerprints, so let yours have her chance!

Protect your work surface before you begin, and be sure you are using washable ink to avoid days of stained fingers and possibly stained clothing and furniture.

Place the white paper and stamp pad on the work surface. Show your child how to press her fingers into the pad to cover the pads of her fingers with ink. You want only the round pads of the fingers, for this project, not a full fingertip as with identification finger prints.