Oh, how I love using kiddos’ hands and fingers to create art! With my preschoolers, I like creating some kind of handprint art with the kids each month. This artwork gets saved and added to their end of the year portfolios. For February, the kids and I tried our hand at a fun valentine handprint craft.
Are you following Fun-A-Day’s Valentine’s Day Pinterest board?
I tend to make hand print hearts for February, but I decided to try something a little different. In the past, my students and I have made handprint trees – one for the fall, a negative space fall tree, and a winter one. Those trees gave me the inspiration to come up with a heart tree for February!
For the tree trunk and branches, I painted each child’s hand and forearm with brown tempera paint. Then I helped the kids press their hands and arms onto a piece of white construction paper.
As the brown paint dried, I got the other paints ready. The children and I decided that red, pink, and purple would be great colors for the hearts. We had a quick discussion about adding white to colors to soften them and make the colors lighter.
Next up, it was time to add fingerprint hearts. Here, I walked the line of letting the children add the heart prints themselves and helping them. Some children wanted to do it independently, while others got annoyed when the hearts didn’t turn out as they’d envisioned. So I helped when they wanted me to, and stayed back if they didn’t want help.
It was fun to see which children wanted hearts all over the tree and its branches, and which children wanted the hearts in very specific spots. One of my little girls made her own, very precise, heart handprint tree and then decided I needed help. I think it turned out even better with her help!
Heart Lesson Plans
Be sure to check out our heart-themed lesson plans for the preschool classroom or the homeschool preschool family. They include weekly plans, explanations of all of the activities, and 9 extra printables to supplement the hands-on learning lessons.
Looking for another valentine handprint craft? Check out what some of my blogging buds have come up with:
Owl Always Love You Handprint Art | Frogs and Snails and Puppy Dog Tails
Baby Bum Print Valentines | House of Burke
I Love Ewe Sheep Handprint Art | Sugar Aunts
For more handprint art ideas, pop over to Fun-A-Day’s Hand Prints Pinterest board or Craftulate’s Hand, Foot and Finger Prints Pinterest board.
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