This activity is part of our 15 minute focus series. It is Valentine’s week, so we worked on drawing the heart shape, cutting out a heart, and decorating the frame.

Objective: Children will be able to draw a heart.

Supplies

1 piece of paper per kid, Con-Tact paper, tissue paper cut in small squares. Crayons, scissors.

Optional: picture of a real heart. Valentine’s themed book.

Prep

Cut papers to be squares. (Save the rectangle you cut off the end for the first activity.)

Then fold each paper in half. Cut one sample heart, and then use that as a template to trace a cutting line on all the other pieces of paper.

Cut pieces of Con-Tact paper, one for each kid, the same size as the squares of paper. When it’s time to peel the backing off, that can be slow going, so I start it during prep time. I careully peel the backing off one corner of the Con-Tact paper, and fold it over to expose one corner so that I can peel it faster later.

Activities

Draw a Heart

Just introduce that since it’s Valentine’s week, we’ve got a lot of hearts in the classroom, and we wanted to show them how to draw a heart. Say “some of you may already know how, but let’s make sure we all know.”

Demo this process (I add “sound effects” to make it more fun as that makes it easier to remember): “make two bumps on the top – boom, boom. Then add a dot right about here – bang. Then draw lines to connect the bumps and the dot – zip, zip.” Demo it a few more times.

Then hand out paper and have them try. Here is my sample, and two examples of their work. Note: I intentionally don’t make mine perfect and make a mistake or two as I work.

Cutting Out a Heart

I demo this: I take one folded piece of paper. I notice the line I drew on it. I line up my scissors with the line, and I cut along the whole line. Then I open it up. Look, I have a heart and a heart shaped frame!

I hand out the folded papers – I try to hand it to them so they are holding it at just the right orientation it will be easy for them to line up their scissors and start cutting. Once they’ve all cut one out, I have them write their names on the frames and hand those to me.

Decorating the Heart / Prepping Frame

Then they use the crayons to draw or write anything they want to on their hearts.

While they do that, I’m doing prep work – I peel the backing paper off the Con-Tact paper and then stick it to the frame, so you have a frame around sticky paper.

Sticky Collage

Then I demo how the paper is sticky. I show that I can put a square of tissue paper on it and it sticks! Or, I can crumple the tissue up and then stick it on. I give them all their frames, and tissue paper, and they get to work.

I tell them if they want to they can hang this collage in the window at home so they can see the light shine through it.

I worried all these projects would take too long. But we were able to do them all in less than 20 minutes. (8 kids, 2 adult helpers.) But you could also split them into separate activities.

Optional Extensions

Anatomical Hearts – Show them a picture of a real heart and talk about how our hearts work and why they are important.

Read a Valentine’s book.

Or do Valentine’s songs (Skinnamarink) or poems.