My Heart Is Bursting- A Valentine Classroom Activity

Saturday morning I whipped up this fun and completely reusable Valentine classroom activity. This little number doubles as an activity and Quinn’s valentines.

This project was completely inspired by my blogging friend Poofy Cheeks Wreck it Ralph Birthday Party. My son became obsessed with it when he saw me reading her blog, but specifically really wanted to punch the windows for a prize.

For this project you will need:

A science display board, a hot glue gun, cups (I used treat cups I found at target, but any old paper cups will do), tissue paper, rubberband, pencil, scissors, treats.

I started by placing my cups in the heart shape I wanted and tracing around them. This meant when it was time to glue them down, I would know exactly where to put them. After that was prepped I started filling the cups.

I put the same thing in each cup. They are in 4k and I didn’t want to have this end in tears. Obviously each cup could have different prizes or some have none. My husband said I should stick a dollar in one so there is a winner, but again–I didn’t want to risk it with the little guys. Maybe you are in the mood to teach the life lesson that life just aint fair.

Next up was cutting the tissue paper. I actually put the hubs in charge of that. I filled cups and he cut tissue paper. Make sure you cut it big enough to wrap around the cup and get rubberbanded down. Ours ended up being 6×6 squares.

Place the tissue paper square over the cup and put the rubberband around the cup to secure the tissue paper. This is actually a lot easier with another set of hands. The hubs would hold the tissue paper and I would drop in with the rubberband.

Now the cups are ready and the heart is planned out on your board, you need to put the two pieces together. Get the hot glue gun nice and hot and then put a bead of glue around the bottom rim of the cup. You need to move quickly, before the glue cools. Plop that cup down on a circle and press. I found it easier to work from the inside out.

Give it a second to cool and for the cups to set and then you are ready to go. You could totally decorate your board or add a fun caption like: “My heart is bursting that you are my friend”. So far I am undecided on adding more.

For the sake of this post, I let Quinn burst one cup so I could get some pics for you all.

 

This is totally reuseable too! Take home your board and next year you lay the board down flat, drop some treats in each cup and rewrap them in tissue paper. You can even use the same rubberbands.

Quinn is so excited to play this with his school friends. If you homeschool or don’t have school aged kids this would still be fun to do. You could fill it with a few prizes and let the kids take turns or a bunch of different little prizes. It is like a fun play on the Easter egg hunt. This is such a versatile idea too, because you could make a clover or a rainbow or a pot of gold for St. Patrick’s day, and an egg for Easter, and pumpkin for Halloween —I think you get the point.

Check out these Valentines:

Love is In the Air, To a Real Gem, You Are Ah-MAZE-ing, You Are the Apple of My Eye, Stop in the Name of Love, You are the X to my O, You are the Cherry on My Sundae, You are My Sunshine

Last year we had our own little Valentine’s party. Check out the gallery below for all the fun Valentine’s Day ideas I have posted about in the past.

 

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