Paper heart doilies always featured into the homemade Valentines of my youth, so imagine my surprise when I had to go to three stores before I could find them! Perhaps this classic decoration is becoming passe? That would be a shame, and I was glad Veronika got to enjoy the whimsy of doilies with this little craft. Our mission: to make Valentine postcards for the relatives.

To start, cut squares from sturdy white paper and then use a paper clip to attach a doily heart to each one.

I then set out a tray with pink and red paint, along with a few sponges I had cut into small pieces so they would fit more easily in Veronika’s hands. I showed her how to dip a sponge in the paint and then dab over the hearts.

When you lift up the doily, a beautiful heart shape is left behind!

Note: We discovered that a light touch with the sponge works best here, or the image becomes a bit muddied.

Let dry, then use stickers or markers for any final decorations before shipping off with love in the mail!

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.

Veronika has made tape resist art before, but with this clever idea from Hands on As We Grow, she now had a chance to combine that art method with two others! I loved the mix of tools that went into this craft, making it a great way to hone a toddler’s fine motor skills.

To start, I used painter’s tape to create a heart shape on a piece of sturdy white paper. Smaller pieces of tape work best for the curvy parts of the heart.

Time for the second method: a rolling pin! I placed the paper in a tray and squirted on a few blobs of pink and peach-colored paint, then showed Veronika how to use a plastic rolling pin to smear the paint. At first she wanted to use the rolling pin more like a paintbrush, stabbing down at the blobs, but then realized she could copy my motion and roll. With a little mommy help, we smeared our paint toward the edges of the paper.

Now for the final method: a comb! I showed her how to drag a comb through the thick wet paint to make neat textured lines.

She loved observing the squiggles and lines that appeared.

I find that it’s best to remove the painter’s tape immediately, while the paint is still wet, and then set the project aside to dry at this point. Veronika loved spotting the heart she had made.

Finally, big brother Travis wrote in a Valentine’s message for their grandmother, making this their second sibling collaboration of the day!

Here’s an adorable way to teach even young toddlers about the connection between Valentine’s Day and love (both in terms of the emotion and in terms of things they love).

First, Veronika and I decorated bags for the upcoming love hunt, and I thought edible paint would make the project even more fun (not to mention delicious!). I poured some coconut yogurt into containers and we tinted one pink and one purple.

Veronika was almost too busy eating (she particularly loved the purple!) to paint, but eventually we had smeared three white treat bags with the yogurt paint.

We tried adding glitter in the middle using a heart cookie cutter as a stencil. Veronika requested a butterfly, too!

Unfortunately once I stood the bags upright to dry, the glitter sprinkled right off – whoops! I left them to dry lying down but propped open slightly by old paper towel tubes (newspaper would work, too), since the yogurt paint is so thick and messy.

It became quite clear, though, that this paint was going to take forever to dry. So when Veronika was impatient for the next part of the activity, we quickly made a plan B and decorated a few more treat bags with heart stickers.

No drying time required now! As we put on the heart stickers, I talked to her about how hearts represent love, and we were going to hunt around the house for things she loves. I put in one of her favorite toys as an example. “You love penguin. Penguin goes in the bag!”

I was amazed at how quickly she understood the concept! She filled the bag with favorite toys and began talking about how much she loves them.

This is not a term she normally uses in her play, so I knew she was making the connection for the first time. Don’t be surprised if your toddler wants to add loved items that don’t fit in the bag. That’s just fine, and serves as a quick lesson on relative sizes! Baby doll didn’t fit, but Veronika can still love her.

Once the bag was full, she was delighted with her little bag. “I got anything I love!” she said. And then when I asked her what big brother Travis might put in his bag, she said without any prompting, “Travis will put in all his Lego guys!”

She really understood! Note: Eventually the yogurt painted bags did dry, so we might keep these on hand to fill with Valentine’s goodies as the holiday approaches.