Simple Valentine Sun Catcher

Firstly the heart sun catcher

This is a classic. I have used this activity for many different seasons. It works well for a Christmas tree, Easter egg, or a sunshine in summer time. I love that this activity can challenge a 2 year old but also be fun for an older child.

Supplies

• Parchment paper
• Tissue paper (We used craft square tissue paper but you could easily buy some pink and red tissue paper and cut it up a bit.)
• Framing construction paper
• Glue

Set up

• I simply cut some parchment paper in a rough shape of a heart.
• Next I cut some black paper in the shape of hearts and then cut out the middle of the heart, leaving a frame of a heart.
• If you are using tissue paper you could cut it up into squares before hand too.

Activity Time

After doing your set up lay the parchment paper out on the table. Provide your children with a glue stick and the paper squares and encourage them to fill the white paper with as much color as possible.

After the paper is filled with beautiful colors you can glue the heart frame around the colorful parchment paper.

After you have glued the construction paper heart on top of the parchment paper you can trim the parchment paper around the frame.

We hung our creations on the window and they seemed to brighten up our overcast and sunless February.

Now lets take a moment to be real…my two year old was having a difficult day. So after all the prep work I set the activity out and my sweet head strong daughter lost her mind over the glue stick lid not coming off. After trying my best to help and calm her I sternly told her she couldn’t do the craft while crying and thrashing around. I took her to the living room, plopped her on the couch and went back to to my other daughter and our craft. My 2 year old left her activity looking like this for over 10 minutes.

I felt frustrated that I did the work to have a fun activity and then all I felt like doing was yelling at my child! But I let her cool down and in about 10 minutes she wandered into the kitchen saying, “I sorry mommy, my fault.” Then we sat down together, with the lid off the glue stick, and did some crafting.

I share this story so you know that even with my schooling, preschool experience, nice pictures and years of mommy experience my activities don’t always go smoothly. Don’t become frustrated, just try again later when you and your child have calmed. Or scrape the activity all together.