Valentine Heart Mosaic

“You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.”
-Maya Angelou

I have always been greatly intrigued by my boys’ creativity… the things they build, what they picture in the clouds, the pretend play ideas they come up with. Watching their little minds create and then live out their imaginations is thrilling. I wonder at what point in our lives we lose that and I hope that it is none too soon for my children. I myself don’t often feel that let’s-sit-down-and-do-a-craft creativity. But I remember with great fondness the memories of doing crafts with my mom and I want the boys to have those same kinds of memories. So with the approach of Valentine’s Day and the boys wanting to “make something with hearts” I had to think of something quick. Something fun and heart-shaped. Something easy the boys could could work on independently.

This super simple Valentine heart mosaic involves nothing more than colored paper, scissors, and a glue stick! And… its great for any stage of scissor users, but especially good for newbies to help them develop those crucial scissor cutting skills! (Check out all the benefits of letting kids cut at Scissor Cutting Skills: why they’re important & how to help your kids learn ’em.)

Let your child free cut multiple pieces of colored paper. You’ll mostly get triangles and rhombuses, but the point is to let them work with the scissors… get acquainted with them and learn how to maneuver them. Then, draw a heart on a sheet of colored paper, smear the heart up with the glue stick, and let your little ones paste on their colorful shapes.

This was our Valentine craft from several years ago when Connor was 3 and Dylan was 19-months old. This was only Dylan’s 2nd craft! He didn’t use scissors (big brother Connor took care of the cutting) but he enjoyed pasting on the colorful shapes. After gluing about 8 pieces on to the heart, Dylan said he was done. It took some encouraging to get him to add more color to the heart, but when he did it actually provided us a little learning opportunity too.

“Can you find an orange piece? How about a yellow one? Can you stick those on?”

And believe it or not, Dylan really did enjoy it despite his pouty picture face!

This simple craft is colorful, fun, and helps with those scissor cutting skills!  Plus, it didn’t require any prep work!  It was a hit with both the boys and mom!