On Tuesday, we shared all of the best Valentine’s Day stories that we’ve been reading this year! And if you’ve been following us for awhile, you know how much we love to read books! We have story time with our little nugget before bed every single night, but we also read stories with her as she takes her nightly nebulizer medication (for asthma), as well as numerous other times throughout the day. I think we’d be lost if we didn’t have an abundance of books to read. They bring us so much joy! They teach us about new people and things, they carry us off on wild adventures, they make us laugh (and sometimes they make us cry), and perhaps best of all…they spark imagination. Books are simply magical! And to share some love for a few of our current favorites, we decided to create some Book-Inspired Valentine’s Day Crafts!
So, just to quickly clarify, the first book in this post is not actually a valentine-themed story. That being said, it is an incredibly heartwarming book, and it inspired us to create one of our favorite Valentine’s Day crafts yet!
Mixed – Colorful Heart Communities
Mixed: A Colorful Story, by Arree Chung, is a brilliant and beautiful children’s book about the importance of unity, love, and acceptance. There were only three colors in the beginning: reds, yellows, and blues. The colors all lived in peaceful harmony…until the day that one red stood up and said, “Reds are the best!” A color catastrophe ensued, causing the colors to separate and live in their own cities. But one day, a yellow noticed a blue, and something magical happened. They fell in love, married, and mixed – creating a brand new color…green! Would the rest of the colors accept this new vibrant color? Would little green inspire other colors to come together and embrace each other’s differences? You’ll just have to grab a copy of this inspiring story to find out!
We discovered this amazing book through an art project that Kaitlyn Edington recently created for her students, and so kindly shared on her Instagram feed. Her elementary school artists created their “Colorful Communities” by painting circles on a sheet of white paper, using watercolor paints. Some of their circles overlapped, allowing for some magical color-mixing action. When their paint had dried, they went back with black markers and added facial expressions to each circle – bringing them all to life. I loved Mrs. E’s project so much that I ordered a copy of Mixed for our daughter, and we set out to create our very own colorful communities – with a little Valentine’s Day twist!
Our daughter received a Faber-Castell Children’s Watercolor Art Resist Kit for her birthday last year. The kit includes five watercolor pencils and a small paintbrush. To use them, you just color with the pencils and then paint over them with water. We had yet to try these watercolor pencils, and I thought this project might be the perfect time to bust them out. We grabbed the pencils, paintbrush, a little container of water, and some white paper. And since we wanted to make a Valentine’s Day craft…instead of creating circles all over the paper…we drew hearts.
We made sure to overlap a few hearts, in order to achieve some color-mixing magic. And once our hearts were all drawn, we painted over them with water. Having never used the watercolor pencils before, I thought that they turned out great – although I think we might have had better color-mixing action if we used standard watercolor paints instead.
We set our colorful hearts aside to dry overnight. Then we grabbed a couple of black markers and set out to give each of our hearts some character. Kaitlyn has a Drawing Reference for Expressions and Emotions in her Teachers Pay Teachers store (along with some other incredible stuff – go check it out)! The digital download only costs $1. And while I love her expressions sheet, I thought that some of the drawings might still be a bit difficult for our four-year-old artist. That being said, I turned to another one of our favorite Instagram teachers…Cassie Stephens…and her recent lesson on Chris Uphues. In her blog post, Cassie shares a free download with various ideas for drawing different cartoon-ish eyes and mouths. When I showed our little nugget, she squealed! So, I popped Cassie’s idea sheet up onto my laptop…and we opened up our Mixed book for further inspiration…as we brought each of our colorful hearts to life.
Our little nugget loves giving every single character that she creates a belly button, so you will notice that each of her hearts has one. π She also loves how a few of the characters in the Mixed book wear hats, so she decided that a few of her hearts should wear hats too. We both absolutely love how this project turned out – and I’m seriously impressed with some of the facial expressions that our daughter created all by herself. Did you happen to spot the little heart that she insisted on drawing on my sheet? Needless to say, we had so much fun doing this Valentine’s Day craft together!
P.S. There is also an animated read-aloud of this awesome book on YouTube!
My Heart Is Like a Zoo – Heart Animals
My Heart Is Like a Zoo, by Michael Hall, is an incredibly creative and colorful book, containing twenty different animals that are all made using heart shapes. There’s a beaver…a yak…a hungry heron fishing for a snack. We love flipping through the pages and counting the many hearts that make up each animal. Some hearts are easier to see, while others require a bit more searching. Either way, your kiddos are bound to have fun with this book. And if they are anything like our little nugget…they will be begging you to create some heart-shaped animals of their very own!
Our daughter happily flipped through the pages of this book, to select the handful of animals that she wished to re-create for a Valentine’s Day craft. She decided on the seal, crab, bunny, and walrus. We then chose various colors of construction paper, and got busy cutting out all of the hearts that were necessary to create each animal.
This really is such a simple craft…since we just used the animals in the book as our guide/template. Once all of our hearts were ready, we grabbed our glue stick and put them all together!Β The one thing that we decided to do differently, was to give each animal heart-shaped eyes and noses – in order to stick with the theme. You could even turn the seal’s ball into a heart, if you really wanted to.
We just love how much color these heartfelt creatures add to our dining room wall!
Hedgehugs – Valentine Hedgehogs
Hedgehugs, by Steve Wilson & Lucy Tapper, is a heartwarming tale about two hedgehogs, who happen to be the best of friends.Β Horace and Hattie like to do everything together. But, there is one thing they simply cannot do – they cannot hug – they are just too spiky. They try to cover their pokey quills on numerous occasions – they roll into snowballs, they squeeze into hollow logs, they even cover their spikes with strawberries. But nothing works…until the day they happen upon a basket of laundry, sitting beneath a clothes line. That’s the day they discover something that magically solves their hugging dilemma. Can you guess what piece of clothing brought them together for their very first warm, soft, and cuddly hedgehug?
I knew right away that this adorable story would pair perfectly with this cute Valentine Hedgehog Craft for Kids, that I found on Fireflies + Mud Pies, a little over a year ago. Melissa even shares a hedgehog and hearts template that you can easily print and cut out at home.
We opted to cut our hedgehog shapes from card stock that we had on-hand. And instead of cutting out numerous little hearts (though it would certainly provide lots of scissor skills practice), we decided to use a handy heart punch and some colorful scrapbook paper. Our little nugget absolutely loved using the heart punch – one might even say that we have quite a few leftover hearts. π
Once we had our hedgehog bodies and heart quills ready to go, we added one eyeball sticker (googly eyes work too) and one mini pom nose to each hedgehog. And we drew on a little mouth, using a black marker. Once our hedgehog’s face was complete, we started gluing all of our heart-shaped quills on, using a glue-stick and/or Elmer’s school glue. And before we knew it, we had created a little Horace and Hattie of our very own!
We thoroughly enjoyed creating all of these Book-Inspired Valentine’s Day Crafts! There is just something special about crafting in relation to a book you love, or recently enjoyed reading. And since we had so much fun, I think more book-inspired crafts are definitely in our future!
If you’re looking for some other book-related craft projects, make sure to check out our recent Groundhug Day Puppet Craft! And I absolutely love this cute Little Love Monsters idea that Lucy, over at Find the Little Mind, shared last year!
HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY!
