As the end of January draws near, it’s time to start thinking towards hearts day, which is just around the corner! Here are a few ideas for Valentine’s Day cards that can be made by your children.
When my kids were in Primary, they celebrated Valentine’s Day in their classrooms and it was requested that each child bring in hand-made Valentines for their classmates. I love the idea of having kids creating something hand-made and personal, but having my four- and five-year-olds write out 30+ cards each just didn’t seem right. So instead, I relied on my technology at hand (scanner and photo-editing software) to ease the process a bit.
Here’s what we did: I had both my son and daughter each create a hand-written note on the top-right corner of a regular piece of printer paper. They were simple notes, written in pencil, and in their own writing. Then I had them trace their words in a thicker Sharpie pen, so it would scan well.
Original note, written in top-right corner
I then scanned the pages. I opened the files in my photo editing software, selected their notes, then pasted them three more times in the four corners of the page, centering in each section so when they were cut, they would look right on each individual piece.
Scanned card, copied and pasted onto an 8.5×11″ sized file in my photo-editing software
I then printed on colored card stock, cut the pages into four cards each, and handed them back over to the children for decorating. They used stickers, glitter glue, and markers to add a special touch (or two or three) to each card. We did this over a few days they were happy with their final products. Unfortunately, though, I forgot to take a photo of the final, decorated result. Boo! But you get the idea!
Homemade Valentine card, Grayson’s version
Here are a few more ideas to check out:
Heart Cutouts – when folded, these could be treated as cards
Bee Mine Valentine Cards
Valentine Finger Puppet (made even easier if you have access to a heart-shaped die cut!)
Thumbprint Valentine Cards (and 19 more ideas)
