Bee Mine Valentine's Day Toddler Craft

This Bee Mine Valentine's Day Toddler Craft is a cute and easy toddler and baby craft for Valentine's Day!

While I definitely wouldn't describe myself as a"crafty" mom, I do like doing the occasional holiday craft with Lars and Soren.  Since Lars and Soren have cousins that are very close in age, we often get together and all do the craft.  Doing this Bee Mine Valentine's Day Toddler Craft was the first time with all four boys and let's just say it was crazier than ever!  But if we can do it with two wild toddlers and two bubbly babies, you can definitely do it too!

In our experience of doing these baby/toddler crafts, we've learned that stamp pads are MUCH easier and less messy than paint.  However, I wanted to do a yellow bee body on a red or pink construction paper, which meant we had to use paint.  It ended up going just fine, although once Soren got the paint in his hands, he refused to open up his palm.  So we just improvised by blotting his paint-covered fist on the paper a few times!

That's the fun thing about doing these crafts - they definitely don't have to be (and will not turn out) perfect.  If they ARE perfect, it's pretty obvious the kid didn't do it 😉

Basically for this Bee Mine Valentine's Day Toddler/Baby Craft, you'll need construction paper, paint (I used this kind), copies of a photo of your child's face (you only need the face cut out), a marker, and some heart stickers.

You will do a handprint in yellow (you could probably do a footprint too if that's easier), have your child paint some black stripes on it, and then glue/tape on the photo and put on the heart stickers for wings.  I did ours in two batches, and for one set I let the handprint dry before painting on the stripes and for the second, I painted on the stripes for Soren's when it was still wet.  They both turned out fine so if you're short on time/don't want to wait for the handprint to dry, you can do it when it's still wet.

For reference, Soren's (below) were done while the yellow paint was wet and Lars' (above) were done while the yellow paint was dry.

Some tips for making these go as smooth as possible:

• Have all the paper cut and ready to go/lined up before you get your toddler involved.
• Have a wet paper towel ready to go to easily clean up when you're done or just need a little wipe up.
• Have a countertop space or table clear and ready to lay out the pieces of paper with the handprints to dry.
• Just have fun with it!  Like I said, it's okay if they don't turn out perfect because in the eyes of grandparents/aunts/uncles/friends, they will be perfect no matter what they look like!