Veronika recently enjoyed painting with a ball dipped in paint, an idea from her Zoom Tinkergarten class. So today we put a simple Valentine’s Day twist on the activity!

I cut out a few heart shapes from construction paper, choosing pink, red, and purple as our background colors. I taped two of them at a time into the bottom of a shoebox with a lid, and added a few drops of pink paint. Make sure the paint is near the hearts, but not directly on them.

Next, add any toys that can shake around! These don’t need to be round balls; in fact Veronika thought it was silly to put in some of her plastic vegetable toys. Anything plastic that can be rinsed and cleaned easily will work just fine.

Close the lid and shake shake shake!

We opened up the lid for the pretty reveal, with the hearts now splattered in paint.

Repeat as many times as your toddler desires! These make great Valentine’s Day cards for relatives or friends, with the bonus that you can make quite a few in a short amount of time.