Valentine's Day Art Activities

Valentine's Day is the perfect time to delve into creative art activities with your students.

By Elisa Jackson

Valentine’s Day is a day filled with friendship and fun. Students love to bring in Valentine’s for their friends and teachers, eat sweets, and participate in art projects. There are many ways to celebrate Valentine's Day, but one of the best is with art projects. Here are some ideas for activities you can do in your classroom.

Art Projects Galore!

The first project is very simple, and lets students be creative. Cut out a bunch of hearts of different sizes and colors. Put them in piles on student’s desks. Tell them they are to make something in a certain theme that you choose. This theme could be an animal, numbers, letters, or anything else you want. Then, students simply glue, tape, or staple hearts together in whatever themed shape they want to make. They can make as many or as few items as they want. This allows them to be creative, and allows you some time to go around and comment on their creativity.

The next project has to do with butterflies. Cut out two big red hearts, two medium black hearts, and two small red hearts for each student. Then cut out black butterfly bodies, heads, and antennae for each student. Students then glue the antennae onto the head, and the head onto the body. Have them set this aside. Then students make the wings out of the hearts. Each wing will have one big, one medium, and one small heart. Take the big heart, and glue the medium heart onto it with the bottom of the hearts at the same point. Do the same thing with the small heart onto the medium heart. Once both wings are done, glue them to the back of the butterfly. You can glue on googly eyes if you want to as well. You can also do a similar project and make ladybugs.

Finger Painting and Symmetry

As kids, we all loved finger painting. Whether you choose to use finger paints, or regular paints, this next project is exciting and educational. It explores the concept of symmetry. Take a white piece of construction paper and draw the left side of a heart with a straight line down to connect the top part to the bottom. Have students finger paint or use paintbrushes to paint inside half of the heart. Once they are done (and the paint is still wet) have them fold the paper in half by pressing firmly, but gently. As they do this, you can go over the concept of symmetry. When they unfold the paper, they will have an awesome looking heart that is symmetrical on both sides. Let this dry over night, and the next day, students can cut out the heart with scissors and hang them around the room.

Heart Cards

Making cards is common for Valentine’s Day, but the way you make them can be a little different. Have students take a red piece of construction paper and fold it in half “hamburger style”. Have them cut out a heart where the bottom of the heart touches the fold. Don’t let them completely cut it out though. Let the fold be the bottom of the heart, but don’t cut it all the way. When you open it up, you will have a heart at the top, and an upside down heart at the bottom. Students can write messages to friends and family inside.

Everybody Loves Food

Food can provide another way to incorporate art. Students can identify colors while decorating cupcakes with different colored hearts, they can glue dried pasta into the shape of hearts, decorate glass jars of candy or chocolates for their parents, and use cookie cutters in the shape of hearts to cut cookie dough. They can decorate the cookies when they are done! All of this is fun, edible, and art inspired. Here are some more Valentine’s Day art activities to do with your class.