We have been having lots of Valentine’s Day fun this week with a few festive activities. If you haven’t heard, I LOVE Valentine’s Day! If you missed it, you can read about it here.
Now that we have Baby Bear, I think I love it even more, if that is possible. And I’m sure as she gets older, it will be even more fun. I’ve been seeing lots of fun crafts and classroom Valentines on other mommy blogs and it makes me excited for the future. I love following moms with littles who are exactly a year older than Evie because every time they post something I always say “I can’t believe she will be doing that next year!” Being first time parents, we have NO IDEA at about what age kids will do certain things. So it is exciting for me to see the possibilities of what we will be able to do in just a short year. Boy, do they grow up fast.
Until then, here are a few last minute ideas for some Valentine’s Day activities for kids under 1. All of these are simple and could be thrown together with little prep! I sometimes have grand ideas and somehow always seem to run out of time. So if you’re last minute like me, I got you.
Masking Tape Finger Paint Art – A while back I did this same thing with a snowflake design. You can see the details here. Basically make a design with masking tape or painters tape, and then let baby smear paint all over. I used red and white paint so we ended up with pink! Let it dry and then peel off the tape! We did this on a canvas – but you could easily do it on paper too for a quick Valentine for Grandma.
Footprint Valentine Cards – We made these Valentine cards for our close family members. It was a little tricky to get a good print. As you can see – some are pretty smeared! But I did do this by myself while Dad was at work so I think that counts for something! I put a little bit of paint on a paper plate and pressed her foot down to cover it evenly. The key is not to have too much paint on the foot. A little goes a long way!
Valentine’s Day Sensory Box – I found some stuff I had around the house that I thought Baby Bear would be interested in and put it all in a box. Her favorite things are crinkly, shiny, and made of paper. I put a couple plastic heart shaped cookie cutters, a couple pieces of a shiny ribbon, cut up pieces of my ipsy bag mailer, and a bow. The base is the crinkled paper that you use for gift boxes. I got it at the dollar store awhile back because I knew she would like to play in this. We haven’t tested it out yet because I was saving it for the weekend so Daddy can play too. He always misses out on the sensory play because he’s at work, so we’ll do it on Valentine’s Day!
Ribbon Pull – This was random and spur of the moment. I had some of my craft things out to make Daddy his Valentine today and Evie got a hold of a few spools of ribbon. She was mesmerized. So I emptied out a little crate I had and tied a bunch of different textured ribbons to it and let her play. She loved it! She sat there for at least 20 minutes playing with the ribbons while I did my thing. Kitty loved it too!
This looks like it was so much fun! I can’t wait to see what you do at Easter!
I better come up with something then!!