This time last year I was experiencing quite the nesting phase in my pregnancy so the girls and I made wool acorn necklaces as our Valentine's day gifts for everyone we knew. This year I am in a constant state of taking on too much and feeling overwhelmed so I was looking for a project we could finish in one session. I was thinking of possibly rolling candles and decorating them with hearts but that even seemed too involved at the moment. In steps my always resourceful friend with her 'children's valentine greeting ideas'. We decided to use our beeswax sheets to make heart ornaments, instead. They were fast and simple - just what this Mama needed. These are great last minute projects, too - you know, just in case you haven't made your Valentine's day crafts yet...
All you do is use a heart shaped cookie cutter (we found ours at Jo-Anns for .99 cents) and cut out two hearts per ornament. They can be the same color or two different colors. On a side note we learned it was easiest to cut them out by the warm fire. When we tried to in our cold kitchen I literally had to step on the cutter with all of my weight to get it to cut through the cold wax. It must have been quite the sight, let me tell you!
Then we cut a piece of hemp cord (just what we had on hand- you could use twine, yarn, embroidery floss or whatever you desire) and pressed it's end in towards the middle of the heart. After that, we took the other heart and gently placed it on top, sandwiching the cord in between the two layers. Using our finger tips we crimped the edges all the way around the heart (especially where the cord comes out to really secure it) and then hung it up to test it out. You can leave them as they are or decorate them more. The girls added hearts they made out of modeling beeswax on to some of them.
For my homeschooling friends out there this project is a great mini art/color theory lesson. When the children use two primary colors for the hearts they learn how to combine them to make secondary colors. For example, C used a yellow heart and a blue heart to make an ornament. When she finished and hung it up in the window for the sun to shine through, she discovered her heart was green. Gotta love lessons like those.
More of our Valentine's day preparations:
We made a heart shaped Valentine's day countdown chain (found online here). Instead of using colored paper I had the girls color the pieces how they wanted to. My girls really are not that interested in 'coloring things in' and prefer to draw and create their own images. You can see proof of this below:
This is C's first ever self portrait. She drew it on the back of the chain paper. I had to snap a picture of it before we could even think about cutting it.
We hung up the heart mobile K and I made many years ago (when our dear friend Tiffeni used to host Waldorf events at her store Kinderhaus) above our nature table.
(Let's just ignore the messy windows with muddy dog paw prints on them, shall we?)
We also decorated the girls' table in the kitchen with their seasonal tree and some past Valentine's day crafts.
One more day left of heart shaped crafting fun! It just doesn't seem to grow old.
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p.s - There is still time to enter to win your own GLOB paint kit. Details here.
