Be Mine, Valentine 2015

I think this is one of our favorite programs every year.  There are so many cool valentine's ideas out there that we have such a hard time picking which ones we're going to do!

This year we offered four different crafts: tin foil stained glass hearts, paper towel owls, tie-dye coffee filter hearts and pop art hearts.  The kids could also create their own valentine's using miscellaneous supplies.

Tin Foil Hearts:

For this project the kids took a square of aluminum foil, painted it with watered down glue and pasted tissue paper pieces to it.  When the heart was covered, they glued it to a colored piece of card stock which had a heart cut out using our Ellison machine.

 

Tie Dye Hearts:

This was super easy yet the results are amazing.  The kids took white coffee filters, colored them with watercolor makers and then a volunteer spritzed them with water to make the colors bleed together.  Once the item dried (which happens fairly quickly) the kids cut them into hearts.

Owls:

These took quite a bit more direction from us, but the results were well worth it!  Once they got the paper on (using both glue sticks and double stick tape), we folded the paper tubes down to make the ears.  The kids glued hearts on for wings, wiggle eyes and foam shapes for beaks.

Some cut their own ears instead of folding the tubes.

Isn't she sweet?

Pop Art Hearts:

We found this online and printed it off for the kids to do.

Spider-Heart!

Attendance: 36, 15

Evaluation: This turned out so fun.  This year the kids only made one true valentine with the others being themed crafts/art projects.  This was a nice change for them and helped us keep the theme fresh.  The tie-dye hearts got a little messy, especially if the coffee filter was overly spritzed.  They turned out great and allow for a wide range of ability levels (a real necessity with a program covering grades 1-5!).  The owls were a lot of work, but they are so different from our normal crafts and well worth the work.  The stained glass hearts didn't turn out quite as well as we'd hoped.  We glued the tin foil to regular paper to create a sturdier base and allow for what we hoped would be a neater finished project upon opening the card.  However, the printer paper wasn't thick enough and the glue and tissue paper bled through, especially along the edges, so that it looked messy instead of neat.  Next time we'll glue the tin foil to card stock.