Tuesday, February 14, 2012

It's A Bird! It's A Plane! It's Valentine's Day!


It's that time of year again, time to make Valentines. My son and I have dhand-made Valentines since he was 2 1/2. We pulled out the Valentines issue of Family Fun Magazine to get some ideas, and G was really excited to make the Caped Cute-saders.

We had everything else on hand except the Tootsie Pops, and made a few changes to the instructions to streamline the process of making 2 dozen Valentines. I printed the Template, blew it up 10% to fit our rubber stamp, glued five copies of the Cape and Mask to a sheet of paper, and copied them onto Red Card Stock. G cut out the Capes and I helped him a little with the small curves of the Masks.

I did not trust Glue Sticks to hold the flat masks onto round Pops. So we ran the Masks through our mini Xyron Sticker Maker which gave G a sheet of Mask Stickers he could easily peel and adhere. Hopefully they will not pop off before his classmates get to eat them.

Knowing my 6 1/2 year old would not be up for writing a message on each cape/card, I used an interchangeable rubber stamp which allows us to create any message, "YOU ARE A SUPER FRIEND", "YOU ARE A SUPER TEACHER", and "FROM G--" for the back of each Cape. Since they were all going to be the same we decided not to write in the other kids names, easier for passing out to a class full of kids.

Finally we punched holes in the tops of the cards. Using a 3-hole punch G decided we could punch 3 cards at a time, very efficient. Then he slipped on each superhero's Cape and his Valentines are ready to take to school in the morning.

Year after year he comes home from school with a pile of generic, store-bought Valentines, but the few handmade ones always seem the most special. We enjoy this ritual every year, and I hope G will continue to want to make his own Valentines. So far he has never asked to buy store-bought ones, he just assumes cards are something we make ourselves.

2 comments:

  1. Too cute!!

    I always have great plans to help Kate make Valentine's, and this year I thought we'd finally do it. Then the cousins were over all weekend and she lost any interest in it. But she did come up with a fun way to put together a little envelope of goodies for all her friends, so that's something!

    ReplyDelete
  2. I have discovered that Griffin always gets tired of and argues about writing out the names. It's like pulling teeth. So we skipped that this year and just did the crafty part he enjoys. Also, breaking it into several separate steps helped. He didn't even complain when we needed to make 5 more after the 1st batch were done.

    It's great we know what works for our kids and help them do something creative they enjoy. :)

    ReplyDelete