Valentine’s Day Power Word Pom Pom Toss

Valentines Day Heart Power Words Pom Pom Toss Game

Yesterday, I posted our Power Word Hopscotch, and I also wanted to share this game that we played to practice my daughter’s vocabulary (or sight words) for Valentine’s Day.

This was a versatile way to play with some of the words she needs to know.  Her school calls them power words, so this is our Power Word Pom Pom Toss.

And since it was February when I made it, I just had to do it with cute little hearts!

Valentines Day Heart Power Words Pom Pom Toss Game 2

I picked up some Valentine-colored pom poms and dollies at the dollar store.

Being February, it was easy to find these things in red and pink, but you can often get this stuff when it’s not Valentine’s Day.  For example, you can buy heart dollies most of the year, sometimes in the cake baking section of a large retail store, or in a party store, and the pom poms are usually stocked in the craft section all year, though maybe not with little hearts on the label.  :)

Valentines Day Heart Power Words Pom Pom Toss Game 3

My daughter had a list of 60 power words, so I bought two packs of 30 dollies each and wrote out each word on a separate heart.

Then we would pick a handful and lay them out on the floor.  For the game above, we would call out a word and then try to throw a pom pom onto that word.

Even for me it took a few tries, but that allowed up to repeat the word a few times.

Then, we would trade those few words out for a few others.

Valentines Day Heart Power Words Pom Pom Toss Game 4

Then, we did a game where we would call out each word and hop onto them, kind of like our Power Word Hopscotch from yesterday.

Just be careful with this one, and be sure to put the dollies onto carpet or something similar.  If you put them onto tile or some wood floor, they will slip right out from under you when you jump onto them.

Valentines Day Heart Power Words Pom Pom Toss Game 5

And for the younger crowd, like preschoolers, you could substitute individual alphabet letters for the sight words!

Have fun!

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Victorian Valentines

Victorian Valentines

This was such a cute project that I just HAD to share it – even though Valentine’s Day has already past.

I found a couple of packs of old fashioned looking stickers {kinda like this or this or this} while browsing scrapbooking supplies and I just couldn’t pass them up.

I wasn’t sure what to do with the stickers at first, but when I pulled out the heart shaped doilies for Valentine’s Day, I realized they would be a perfect pair!

Thus were born our “Victorian Valentines!”

Victorian Valentines

We cut out some pink and red hearts from construction paper to fit within the “lace” and glued them down.  Then they added stickers to the heart.

We kept these to use as decorations, but if you wanted to give them as actual Valentines, there’s plenty of room on the back to write a nice message!

Happy Crafting!

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“Chalkboard” Valentine’s Day Hearts

"Chalkboard" Valentine's Day Hearts Activity for Kids

This is a fun little activity I did with my girls to celebrate Valentine’s Day.

I cut some hearts out of black construction paper and drew on them with white and silver colored pencils to show my girls how it looked.

The fun mini hearts look like little chalkboards and my girls were delighted with how the light colors looked so vibrant on the dark hearts.

They spent quite a while drawing on the hearts and experimenting with different colors {though mostly after I took the photograph}.

The picture shows just a few of the hearts, but one of the things I also made sure to do was to cut out hearts in varying sizes.

And next time I’ll probably let them help me cut them out, but this time they were too busy coloring.  :)

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Valentine’s Day Printable Tags for Bubbles

Free Printable Valentine's Day Tags for Bubbles

These are the Valentine’s Day treats that my kids will be giving to their class this month.

I chose bubbles because I really wanted to avoid adding even more sugar to the student’s pile of what was sure to be a large load of candy.

And bubble are always a hit with kids.

So I looked around and found these adorable mini bubbles at Target in the holiday section of the store.  I then found the Valentine’s colored bakers twine in the bargain section near the front of Target.

Of course, you can also sometimes find colorful bakers twine in the baking section of stores, and I’ve sometimes found fun colors of bakers twine in the craft section of my local Dollar Tree.

And if you’re having trouble finding mini bubbles, I’ve found that Party City usually has a large supply of colorful bubbles as party favors.

Free Printable Valentine's Day Tags for Bubbles

Anyway:  back to the tags!

I made these heart-shaped tags in red and pink, after playing around with other color combinations like red and blue or red and purple.  I found I liked the way these looked best.

And they probably would have looked even better for my photos if my printer hadn’t started running out of ink…..

I made two versions.  The first has both a “to” and “from” on it, and the second {seen in the photos} only has “from.”

I did this because my girls are in preschool and it just seemed easier on everyone if we only wrote their names on the Valentines instead of the names of all of their classmates, too.  But older kids might want to write who they’re for, so I made that an option.

Valentine's Day Printable Tags for Bubbles

To assemble the Valentines, I first wrote my girls’ names on the heart and cut them out.  Then I punched a hole in the heart with a hole punch on the left side of the top of the heart.

Next, I cut a piece of bakers twine about 10 inches long and tied it around the neck of the bubble bottle.  I double knotted it so it wouldn’t go anywhere.  Then I strung the heart onto one piece of the tied bakers twine and tied another double knot to secure the heart to the bubbles.

You could stop there, I guess, but I went ahead and tied a bow to make them look a little nicer.  I double knotted the bow as well, so it wouldn’t come undone.

I then packed all the bubbles into a heart-shaped basket we already had to make it easy for my girls to bring them to school

To open the free printable PDFs, click on the link below for the one you want:

Valentine’s Day Printable Tags for Bubbles  {with “To” and “From”}

Valentine’s Day Printable Tags for Bubbles  {with “From” only}

Happy Crafting!  And please share your photos with me here or on Facebook if you make these!!

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Valentine’s Day Lunch Snack Ideas for Kids

Valentine's Day Lunch Snack Ideas For Kids at RoamingRosie.com

With Valentine’s Day just around the corner, I’ve already started adding fun Valentines-themed snacks to my kid’s lunches.

The top picture is of heart-shaped strawberries.

Okay, okay… they’re not obviously hearts upon first glance, so I did mention to my girls ahead of time that they were getting strawberry hearts in their lunch bags.  Just in case my artfulness didn’t shine through right away.

Anyway, to make quick strawberry treats that vaguely resemble hearts, follow these steps:

  • Wash strawberry.
  • Cut top off of strawberry.
  • Cut berry in half.
  • Cut a triangle out of the top center of the berry.
  • Cut off the edges of the top at an angle.
  • Ensure children they’re getting lovingly carved hearts and not mangled fruit pieces.

You can also toss those extra strawberry pieces into a bowl of cereal or oatmeal, by the way.

And onto the next photo…. I used a tiny {about 1-inch} cookie cutter to cut hearts out of American cheese slices and flour tortillas.

I cut out about twice as many tortilla hearts as cheese ones because my oldest likes to assemble her own cheese sandwiches out of the pieces.

The last photo doesn’t have anything heart-shaped, but instead includes something red.

I tossed a few red M&Ms {leftover from Christmas} into a container of nuts.  Cashews, specifically, since I think they taste better than peanuts, and there are kids in my daughters’ classes with peanut allergies.

My girls will eat the nuts without any extra incentive, but I felt the dash of red color just added a little fun.

And if you’re wondering about the containers I had the cashews in, these are the ones I use:

Kotobuki Children's Bub a Buu Snack Container, Triangular Onigiri Animals, Set of 3

My girls love getting snacks in these little triangle containers.  They’re technically condiment containers, but they’re easy to open {even for my 2yo} and they hold plenty of food.

Not a LOT of food, mind you, but a handful of nuts or raisins or goldfish or about 5 or 6 grapes.  Enough for a snack.

Oh, and I also cut apple slices and used the same heart shaped cookie cutter to remove the seeds, thus putting a heart in the middle of the circle slice.  But I forgot to photograph those.  I’ll try to remember next time.  :)

Please share any fun Valentine’s snacks you’ve made for your own kiddos!

**********EDIT:  Aug 2015**********

Aaaaaand….. now that I’ve been making heart strawberries in a way that’s SO much easier for a while now, I should probably update this post!  ;)

Anyway, after I wrote this, I discovered that it was way easier to just cut the strawberry in half and use a small heart-shaped cookie cutter to cut out the heart.  Takes two seconds and looks amazing!  Plus – the cuteness factor means my kids eat more fruit!  (Even at school!!!)

Check it out:

Heart Shaped Strawberries and Sandwiches for Kids Lunches

And you can see that I used one of the larger heart-shaped cutters for the sandwiches.  Since peanut butter and (strawberry) jelly can get a little messy, I sometimes cut out the bread first and then fill them instead of making the sandwich ahead of time and then cutting out the heart.

Happy Eating!  (Or happy school-lunch making!)

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Heart-Shaped Salt Dough Fingerprint Magnets

Heart Shaped Salt Dough Fingerprint Magnets

For Grandma’s birthday this year we made little magnets from salt dough that had the impressions of the girls’ fingerprints.

Last year we made a large heart for both of their footprints, and it was a big hit, but this year I wanted to something a little different.

And, admittedly, the little fingerprints don’t really show their fingerprint texture; they’re really more like finger “indents.”  But the girls really liked making them for Grandma and hanging them on the fridge.

We put their initial on their heart so they’d know which was which, and they like that their fingers fit in the imprints.

Heart Shaped Salt Dough Fingerprint Magnets

Salt dough is a pretty standard recipe.  For this project I made half of the recipe, and what we didn’t use, I let the girls play with, since it’s like play dough.

To make the salt dough: 

Combine 1 cup flour and 1 cup salt in a bowl.  Mix in 1/2 cup water.  Knead. 

To make the hearts, I rolled out the dough and used a cookie cutter to cut out the hearts.  The girls pressed in their fingers and I drew in their initials with a toothpick.  Then we baked them at 200 degrees Fahrenheit for two hours, flipped them over and baked for an additional 30 minutes.  Once cool, we painted them.  Once the paint was dry, I attached button magnets to the back.

Heart Shaped Salt Dough Fingerprint Magnets

And, of course, we rolled out the dough on our Jake and the Neverland Pirates Placemat.  I think I love this thing more than my kids.  It’s soooooo easy to clean.  We use it for meals and crafts.  I’m a fan of multi-purposeing.

Oh – and we used the toy play dough rolling pin.  But you could roll it out with whatever you have:  a regular rolling pin, a drinking glass, etc.

Heart Shaped Salt Dough Fingerprint Magnets

I helped my girls press their fingers into the dough so that their two fingerprints would mimic the shape of the heart.

Heart Shaped Salt Dough Fingerprint Magnets

Then I took a toothpick and drew in their initials by pressing the end of the toothpick into the dough.

Heart Shaped Salt Dough Fingerprint Magnets

After baking the shapes (we made a few) and cooling them completely, we painted them.

We used sponge brushes and a metallic pink acrylic paint.  I like the sponge brushes because it’s easy to cover the shape and you can soak up excess paint from the letters with the sponge.

We didn’t seal them with anything, but you could.

I bought button magnets with adhesive so all we had to do was peel off the paper and stick them to the back of the hearts once the paint was dry.  But you could use any type of crafting magnet.

Heart Shaped Salt Dough Fingerprint Magnets

We had a lot of fun making these and the finished product made a great gift for Grandma’s birthday.

What have you used salt dough to make?

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Custom Sand Heart Ornament for “Our First Christmas”

Custom Sand Heart Our First Christmas Ornament

I’ve always loved this ornament.

I created it from a photo I took a couple of years ago of a heart I drew in the sand of the shore of one of my favorite beaches.

And I just love the way it looks when it’s customized.  This is something I’ve given to family members as gifts, and it’s just so beautiful in person!

Here is the back of the ceramic heart:

Custom Sand Heart Our First Christmas Ornament

But the best part?  It’s fully customizable.  So it doesn’t have to read “Our First Christmas.”  It could say “Our Second Christmas,” “50th wedding anniversary,” or anything else that makes you smile.

It doesn’t even have to be about couples.  You could make one for your kid instead, with their name in the heart and “My First Christmas” on the back.  The possibilities are endless.

Plus, Zazzle has their awesome 100% satisfaction guarantee, so it’s a great place to personalize things.

Interested?  Click on the photos above to see the heart ornament, or check out Zazzle’s latest coupons!