Valentine’s Day – Page 5 – joyful parenting

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What could be sweeter than receiving a hug in the mail from a loved one far away? Although we made this craft for Valentine’s Day, you could send your hug any time of year to grandparents or other special people in your child’s life.

Have your child lie down on a large sheet of butcher paper, and trace their torso with arms outstretched as if they’re about to give a hug. Kids will love the tickly feeling of being traced by a crayon or colored pencil!

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Now it’s time to fill in the details. Travis didn’t want to draw the face, so I asked him to tell me where the eyes/ears/etc. should go, and filled them in.

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He then gave himself a “purple shirt,” even though his purple crayon didn’t land exactly where the torso outline was! Part of the beauty of this project is that it will end up how your toddler wants it to.

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Across the top, I wrote to our recipient that the picture was “a hug from Travis.” Now fold it up and send it in the mail to someone you love.

This wasn’t Travis’s favorite of the crafts we put together for Valentine’s Day, but I sure thought the end result was the cutest.

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We kicked off our Valentine’s Day projects today! As with the handprint wreath we made for Christmas, I love holiday projects that incorporate the current size of your child’s hands – they serve as an adorable reminder as years go by. For this craft, we added in feet, too!

Let your child paint one hand (preferably in red or pink), and then help him or her paint the other hand.

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Press the hands onto white paper like a stamp, and ideally you’ll get a heart shape. Travis didn’t exactly keep his hands still, which meant our “heart” is open to interpretation in this one!

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The feet, believe it or not, turned out better. While he sat on a stool, I painted the bottoms of his feet red – which he loved, giggling the whole time. We then pressed the feet down one at a time for a very successful “heart.”

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Once the paint dries, cut a heart shape around your hand or foot prints. Scalloped scissors make a nice decorative edge. Travis helped glue these onto larger pieces of pink and red construction paper as backing. I then trimmed these into a final, largest heart.

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