Valentine’s Day Crafts For Toddlers

Making holidays special for little ones can be such a fun part of being a mom. At Valentine’s Day, crafts are a great way to engage toddlers in the festivities. I love the time spent together being creative. Bonus if we make something that can be used as a decoration for years to come or given as a holiday gift! I am always looking for craft ideas for toddlers (that don’t make a huge mess and use things we already have at our house). My son is currently three years old, and these have been our favorite Valentine’s Day crafts.

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Valentine’s Day Crafts for Toddlers

Love Bugs

Materials You’ll Need:

• Cardboard tubes
• Construction paper
• Markers
• Stickers
• Scissors
• Glue stick or tape
• Googly eyes
• Pipe cleaners

I wrapped each tube in construction paper using a glue stick to hold it in place. Then I cut out hearts from construction paper to make the wings and used tape to secure pipe cleaners as antennae. My toddler used markers, stickers, and googly eyes to decorate. This was easily his favorite Valentine’s Day craft, which he has proudly displayed around our house as decoration.

Heart Wreath

Materials You’ll Need:

• Cardboard
• Tissue paper
• Glue
• Paintbrush
• Scissors
• String or ribbon to hang

I cut a heart shape from cereal box cardboard and poked a hole through the top to hang a string. Next, I cut red tissue paper and purple streamers that we had into small squares. I used a paintbrush to spread glue over the cardboard. My son crinkled up the tissue paper squares and placed them on the glue to fill the shape.

We had fun with this project; my son enjoyed the texture of the tissue paper. I would caution against making the wreath too big because it could become tedious. The cereal box was the right size for us to keep my son’s interest. The streamer paper was a bit thicker, so we didn’t need as much of it, compared to the tissue paper. But use whatever you have; both worked just fine to achieve this look. Anticipating the glue to make a mess, I was pleasantly surprised at how well using a paintbrush kept things tidy.

Coffee Filter Hearts

Materials You’ll Need:

• Coffee filters
• Scissors
• Markers
• Water
• Dropper
• Tray or baking sheet
• Plenty of paper towels to clean up

There was a little bit of experimenting involved with this project to get it right. Ultimately, it was entertaining, so I can fully recommend it. I cut the coffee filters into hearts and let my son draw on them with markers. The more marker, the better! You want thick, dark spots of color.

We laid the marked-up hearts on a baking sheet. Then my son used a dropper to add water. The first one we did got completely soaked, and all the color washed off. The next three went better; I just had to stop my toddler before the water started pooling in the tray. You want to let them dry as much as possible right where they are before you move them.

Once they dried, I used a glue stick to glue them to regular printer paper to give as Valentine’s cards. The white paper helps the colors pop. I liked the tie-dye look, and my son had so much fun playing with the water and dropper! I have seen other people do this craft using a small spray bottle instead of a dropper for water, which may be less messy if you have one.

Bee My Valentine

Materials You’ll Need:

• Paper plate
• Markers
• Printer paper
• Optional: googly eyes
• Tape or glue

This craft is pretty straightforward. My toddler likes bees, so he enjoyed the idea of making one. I liked that we could use his handprints as the wings. We each colored a plate with yellow and black markers. I used a googly eye for mine, while my son chose to draw his own and add red spots to his bee. We traced my son’s hands on some white printer paper and cut them out. We used tape to attach them to the plate as the bee’s wings.

These came out so cute! We hung them on the wall in our living room, but I could also see giving this to grandparents as a Valentine.