My preschooler is having her first Valentine’s Day party at school, so we decided to create easy Valentine boxes. We had a great time! Making this kids Valentines box using thing we had in our pantry made it extra simple too since we used things we already had in the home. My toddler and I enjoy crafts that work on her fine motor skills and the opportunity to be creative together – it’s more crafting than I’ve ever done in my life – but the more simple the craft, the better for this working mom! We had a great time coming up with Valentine Day box ideas and decided on a design she loved. She wanted something that “popped off the box” and her name to hang on a banner. The things we do for our kiddos, right?
Kids Valentines Box
My preschooler loves the craft section in our local store, so we usually have a decent stash of stickers, paint, foam shapes, glitter and pipe cleaners. Our craft box contained almost everything we needed to make her easy Valentine’s Day boxes, with the exception of cheerful wrapping paper and an empty cereal box. Having a few craft items on hand made all the difference in getting this project done from idea to finished product in just an hour or two.
Easy Valentine Boxes
In my opinion, the best part of kids crafts is the lack of crazy expectations for perfection. The pressure to create perfect, beautiful crafts always sucked the joy out of the experience when I was a kid. Our crafts aren’t gorgeous, but they are authentic. My kids choose their ideas for decorating a Valentine box, did all the cutting and painting, and created something they’re proud of. Using an empty cereal box teaches them that to think of everyday products in new ways, which I think is super cool too. We made a cereal Valentine, but could you also recycle a milk jug, laundry detergent box or something else to make this super easy Valentine’s Day box craft for kids.
Using a heart themed wrapping paper, my preschooler drew, cut and painted cardboard shaped hearts that popped off the cereal box with pipe cleaners. She then painted a few dowels where we threaded her name banner along.
Here’s a list of everything we used, but let your imagination run wild:
- Empty Cereal Box
- Valentine’s Day Wrapping Paper*
- Extra cardboard
- Dowels
- Foam stickers
- Glitter glue
- Paint
- Needle and Thread
*Note: If you don’t have Valentine’s wrapping paper, design your own using blank card stock or even printing paper! As long as you can wrap the cereal box, you can create any kind of themed design you’d like using clipart, stickers or hand drawing.
Box Craft for Kids
Easy Valentine’s Day Boxes
After neatly wrapping the cereal box myself, I let Alina use her imagination to decorate her first Valentine’s Day Box. We had so much fun together! We worked on cutting skills, drawing hearts and various shapes, writing her name and, of course, painting…. her favorite! The decorated Valentine’s Day box was the end product, but the skills we practiced and the memories we created were my favorite part.
Step by step instructions to make easy Valentine’s Day boxes with your own little ones:
- Wrap the cereal box with wrapping paper: This can be done by the kids or an adult. This was the only step I did for my preschooler.
- Decorate the wrapped cereal box: Use stickers, paint of whatever creative tools your imagination thinks up! Maybe use sponges to create a rainbow and clouds, or stencils to add animals.
- Add layer and dimension by creating shapes that POP from the box: Draw and cut out heart shapes on the extra cardboard. Decorate those pop-out shapes using paint, glitter glue, etc. Fold a pipe cleaner in half and twist to reinforce it and wrap them around the grip of a wooden spoon to give it a spiral shape.
- Parent’s Part: Using sharp scissors, poke holes in the middle of the cardboard hearts and push the pipe-cleaner through, fastening on the inside with tape, and repeat the same process on the cereal box to attach the two pieces together.
- Final bling and decorations: Add heart stickers on top of the heart wrapping paper to add the last decorated layer to your box. We talked about layering and the sizes of the hearts. We made sure to put different colors together. We used glitter glue to outline the hearts.
While my toddler was decorating, I wrote each letter of her name on several hearts and let them dry overnight. We fastened dowels on the inside of the box and, using a needle and thread, made a banner out of the letter hearts. We later attached the banner to the dowels. She loved that part!
