Valentine’s Day is just around the corner, and it’s one of the best opportunities to create and keep your preschooler busy. Parents can also enjoy peace of mind that their young ones are stimulated and having fun. The benefits of crafts for little ones far outweigh any concern about preparation time or clean up.
Top Benefits Of Crafts For Preschoolers
At Providence Children’s Academy, our top priority is to nurture children in ways that will hold them in good stead for the rest of their school careers and lives. We aim to provide everything needed for them to thrive physically, socially, and academically in each unique stage of growth. One of the ways we do this with our preschool-aged children is through arts and crafts.
Here are 3 of the benefits, and why we value this creative space for little ones:
Cognitive Development Boost
By identifying shapes, colors, and following craft instructions, young children have to put their thinking caps on to get the craft right. Other skills involved are observing the relationship between cause and effect, pattern recognition, and spatial awareness.
Language And Comprehension
Believe it or not, creating beautiful crafts together with other children and teachers or parents is an opportunity for preschoolers to develop their language and comprehension skills. As the parent or facilitator of the craft, you could ask questions about what the child is doing. This will help them process and identify how to put their answer into words.
Imagination Nourishment
Creating is one of the most important skills we learn as human beings. By creating, innovating, and developing something from scratch, children learn how to imagine something big or different, and then take the necessary steps to make that thing happen! This is a skill that will work for almost anything in life, including relationships and careers.
5 Valentine’s Day-Themed Crafts For Preschoolers
These crafts are fun, beautiful, and are sure to spread the love this coming Valentine’s Day:
1. Watercolor Newsprint Window Hearts
This craft is perfect for decorating the classroom or your home in a Valentine’s-themed way.
- First, grab some old newspaper and your watercolor set.
- Give each child a big paintbrush and water.
- Get them to cover the newspaper in various colors, shapes, and swirls. Let them go crazy until it’s covered with color and creativity.
- Cut out different sizes of hearts and then stick them wherever you need to spread some love!
2. Salt Dough Heart Decorations
This one might take a little bit of preparation. You will need to create the salt dough ahead of time and bake it so it’s ready for children to paint.
To make the salt dough:
- Combine 1 cup of plain flour with half a cup of table salt and half a cup of water.
- Mix and then cut into heart shapes, or any other Valentine’s Day shapes you prefer (make sure you punch a small hole at the top of the shape so you can thread ribbon through the decoration and hang it up somewhere when it’s dry).
- Place the shape cutouts into a preheated oven to bake for 2 hours at 248 degrees Fahrenheit (or until hard).
- Once they’re hard, they’re ready to cool and paint.
3. Heart Collage Craft For Valentine’s Day
Toddlers love to cut and paste. It’s also a fine motor skill that they need to develop during their preschool years.
- Cut out a heart shape from your choice of cardboard, one for each child.
- Provide red, purple, pink, and white (or any colors you prefer) colored paper for children to cut bits out of, or to tear up for their collages.
- Provide some safe glue for them to paste the bits of colored paper onto the heart shape.
- Voila! At the end, once they have covered their heart shapes in different colored bits of paper, you can turn their heart creations into a Valentine’s Day card, or display on the wall.
4. Heart-Person Valentine’s Craft
This is quite a nice craft to encourage a sense of love and connection, since preschoolers will create their very own Valentine’s person.
- Cut heart shapes out of pink sugar paper or card of your choice.
- Cut long bits of rectangular shaped pieces of paper to fold back and forth, creating arms and legs for the heart.
- Paste the arms and legs onto the heart shape as a body with some dangling limbs. Fold back and forth to create a bounding limb look.
- Get children to draw a face on the heart body and then swap with a friend! This will encourage them to not only create something, but make someone else feel special and loved!
5. Bleeding Tissue Paper Hearts
The interesting thing about a heart is that it has two meanings or functions. Everybody has a heart organ inside them, which pumps blood throughout the body to keep them alive. The heart shape is also symbolic of love, which is why we use it during Valentine’s Day.
This craft is a fun one, as well as being a teaching moment about anatomy.
- Cut out bits of tissue paper of different colors.
- Cut out heart shapes out of white cardboard.
- Using some water, get the children to wet the tissue paper onto the white heart cutouts so the color bleeds out from the tissue paper and drops onto the heart.
- The bleeding tissue paper resembles how our hearts pump blood through our bodies to keep us alive! Yet the heart is also how we experience different emotions.
The Best Preschool In Coconut Creek
If you’re looking for a school for your preschool-aged child, Providence Children’s Academy is the best option in Coconut Creek and the surrounding area. With dedicated learning areas in the preschool classroom, parent interaction, VPK programs, afterschool and summer camp programs, and much more, our team is devoted to the overall well-being and academic success of your children.
Book a tour to visit our school and learn more about our approach to holistic education. Call us at 954-570-6914.