Homemade Valentine's Craft Tray

We're excited to be participating in our third Read + Play event!  This time 20 + bloggers have all connected a favorite Valentine's Day book with a great play, craft, or learning activity.

In the last few years we've discovered the character Pete the Cat and really enjoy this series. In his Valentine's Day book, Pete the Cat: Valentine's Day is Cool, he begins the book thinking Valentine's Day isn't cool. But as he makes Valentine's for his class, family, and friends he discovers Valentine's Day is cool.

I'm a big fan of all the amazingly creative Valentine's Day ideas you can find on Pinterest these days (if you haven't seen them check out our Valentine's Day Pinterest board) but for this project I decided to go traditional with homemade, kid created, Valentine's cards. In the book Pete keeps his materials simple and designs each card for someone in mind, so our plan was to do the same thing. There's something still really sweet and meaningful about cards a child creates on their own. 

Last year around this time I was shopping in a large craft store and spotted a really cute "Valentine's Craft Tray." It had all the materials a kiddo would need to create several homemade, open-ended Valentine's Day Cards. I liked the idea, but of course knew I could put together our own tray for the boys for about half the price. 

Materials: 

colored card stock ( about 3 sheets of each color: red, white, pink, purple, dark red)

foam heart stickers (easy to find at the dollar store) 

foil heart stickers ( also from the dollar store) 

heart doilies (usually found in the Valentine's aisle of a larger store like Wal-Mart)

glue stick

glitter glue

scissors

plastic appetizer tray

Before setting out the tray I did a little prep work. I cut some of the card stock into 4.5 x 8.5 rectangles. I folded these in half to make small cards. I also cut a handful of hearts in different sizes and colors from the card stock. I combined these items with all of the other materials onto the tray. (I found our tray at the dollar store quite a while ago, we use it for lots of crafting activities.) 

The boys and I read the story and then created a list of some of the important people he wanted to make Valentine's for. (We did decide to make something different for his class.) We didn't want to forget anyone important like Pete the Cat did. 

Then Big Brother began creating. 

He picked someone off his list and started making a card with them in mind. It was fun to see what material he went for first. I really wanted these to be "kid made" cards, so there was no design or explanations needed. He did what he wanted. 

Little Brother also got interested and worked on a Valentine's card too. If I peeled the back off the stickers he could add them to his cards and he experimented with the glitter glue. 

Big Brother made several more cards, although he didn't finish his list. He asked me to leave the tray out for another day. 

The cards were definitely kid created in the end and each one was a little different. 

What are your favorite materials for crafting homemade Valentine's Day Cards? We'd love to hear what you would add to the tray. 

And don't forget to check out the other "cool Valentine's Day" posts from these other amazing bloggers. 

This post may also have been shared at some of these terrific link parties.