February 2006 Activity

Heart-y Animals
http://www.kidsdomain.com/craft/animals.html
The project is to make animals using hearts as the base of the drawing. These heart animals can be hung on the wall or used to make Valentines cards.

This project is rated EASY to do.

 

What You Need
 

  • Construction paper in red, white, pink

  • Scissors

  • Markers

  • Heart shaped stickers, optional

  • Fabric to cut into heart shapes, optional

  • Yarn, buttons or other trims; optional

  • Heart shaped patterns, optional

Pre-cut hearts (recommended for younger kids), optional

 

How To Make It
 
You can let the children draw their own hearts on paper and then add the details to make animals, let them cut hearts out of paper or cloth, have an assortment of pre-cut hearts (good for younger children). You can also use simple heart shaped stickers for some of the smaller hearts.

The simplest version of the project is to make a drawing of an animal drawing hearts or on paper, or arrange pre-cut hearts on paper. For a more complex project, children can cut their own hearts.
 
Tips
 
Make heart-shaped patterns for the children in a variety of sizes and proportions for them to cut out their own. Show them to fold the paper in half to make a symmetrical heart.

This tip is from Jan Klineburger: I do crafts at a small 1 - 8 grade school. I found your site and did the heart-y animals with the 18 kids in the school. We made 34 butterflies, and 14 bunny type (with some variations) and also wove 25 hearts that we filled with candies. We gave these out at church before Valentines Day. They were a big hit. Some were also taken to a home for the elderly and 12 butterflies will be made and put on sticks to be put in some plants and given to shut-ins in our church. I found that by giving the copied hearts to the older students to cut out as they had time the week before we made the heart-y animals worked best.

Then the 1st graders, who have trouble cutting , could concentrate on being creative and so could everyone else. Some even added paws to the bunny. They all had a great time and several took patterns home and I gave them your web site too.

Source of craft is from http://www.kidsdomain.com/craft/animals.html