Valentine's Day Preparations

We spent the weekend making preparations for Valentine's Day at school and Awanas for Wednesday. The boys have always enjoyed doing crafts and being creative, so we have found some fun Valentine's to work on together from Pinterest. The first homemade valentines that I made with the boys were for when Big Man was in three-year-old preschool.

The only requirement for three-year-old preschool was that the kids write their own name on the valentines so the kids knew who they were from. What a blessing that they did not have to write all the other childrens' names and then have to match the bags for each one at school. I took to Pinterest and starting searching for valentines that would be suitable. I found ZakkaLife crafting blog that had made these Super Valentines that were perfect!

They are pretty simple and include a small sucker which is fun for the kids and easily allergy free. I like that there is plenty of room for the little ones to write their name on the back of the cape, and it also allows them the chance to practice their cutting skills. I did cut out the masks since they are more difficult to cut nicely.

Everything was cut out, holes punched for the sucker, names printed on the back, and used a specially shaped scissors to texturized scissors to give the cape a nice edge. Then I found that tape didn't hold the mask on very well with the waxy sucker paper, so I ended up using a small dot of glue from my glue gun to hold on the mask and the cape. This year Bear was making the same valentines for his Pre-K preschool class, and next year it will probably be Mr. T's turn.

This year and last year Big Man is not able to bring valentines with food in school. So back to Pinterest I went and there are many options to choose from that do not include food treats. Knowing my childrens' love for balloons these valentines from Paper Trail Design are perfect. I ordered some heart shaped balloons from Amazon here. Once these are printed there is not a lot more to do other than cutting and putting their name on the back. 

This year instead of making a little cut out for the balloon to slip into I found some Washi tape I used to have from my scrapbooking collection, before I decided to do digital pages. It worked really well to just tape the balloons onto the front of the cards and it added a nice splash of color too. The boys had fun working on them, and they're excited to hand them out to their friends at school and Awanas. Since each boy had about 30 to make we started early, but now we are ready to celebrate on Wednesday!