Valentine Collage Heart Banner

I'm not the biggest fan of this upcoming holiday but one aspect I do like is all of the handmade gifts. Similar to Christmas, it seems like everyone goes all crafty gung-ho for their V-Day cards and gifts. Always more thoughtful to send something handmade than store bought! 

It's even cuter when it's something handmade by a kiddo. My first graders and I made some adorable collage heart banners this week for Valentine's Day. I did this project last year with my kiddos but changed it slightly...so it's Heart Banner 2.0! They're super easy to make and work as a Valentine gift or just decoration. 

Supplies:

• assorted small strips of paper (we used graph paper, red/pink construction, shiny silver and pink paper and tissue paper)
• a sheet of normal paper sized 8.5" x 11"
• a sheet of larger paper in a different color
• a sharpie or marker
• scissors
• a glue stick
• yarn or ribbon

1. Cover the ENTIRE front of the 8.5 x 11 paper with the little strips of paper. They can overlap each other too, just make sure they're glued down really well. 

2. Flip the paper over and draw hearts all over the back. They can be the same size or vary. We got about 8 hearts from one sheet of paper.

3. On the larger sheet of paper, draw hearts slightly larger than the first page of hearts. Make sure you draw the same amount as the other page so each heart has a pair. 

4. Cut out all of the hearts! With little ones, it's a good exercise for practicing cutting along a line. Took a little while to cut out all 16 hearts too! This is the exciting part because the kiddos don't know exactly what the hearts will look like when they're cut out! 

5. Make heart sandwiches! Space the larger hearts out with the string on top of them. Put lots of glue on the underside of the collaged hearts and glue on top of the large heart, sandwiching the string between the two hearts. Glue hearts all along the string until you run out of hearts. 

Optional: Have the kiddos decorate the hearts! We had bottles of glitter glue but stickers or markers would work too! Then hang up them up! 

It got a little hectic when we broke out the glitter glue for them to decorate but the kiddos really enjoyed it! Even the boys didn't mind playing with pink paper for an hour. 

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Edit: Hey friends! I also just got notified that I'm nominated for a Best of Blog Awards in the Best of Blogger Shops: Best Arts and Prints category over at My So-Called Chaos! If you feel so inclined, you can vote for me here (I'm in the last section of the voting categories).  Angie is such a sweetheart for putting these awards on, and it's so sweet of someone out there to nominate me! Definitely made my day! 

teaching the Creative Collective

A couple weeks ago, I was struggling to figure out a lesson for my 5th and 6th grade collage classes. They're old enough that I can do more ambitious and challenging projects and I love seeing what they make when given unique prompts and materials. Then during another restless night, I had the idea to borrow Melyssa's brilliant idea for the first prompt of the Creative Collective! A word for 2014!

Not familiar with the Creative Collective? Melyssa over at the Nectar Collective had the brilliant idea to share 23 creative prompts throughout the year to get people inspired to create, share, encourage and see other people's work! Pretty fantastic right? 

So back to the kiddos...I asked them: What word(s) do you want to focus on this year? What do you want to accomplish? How will you make your word happen? Their response was incredible! 

We spent two weeks on this project. Week one was brainstorming their word and creating the background. Week 2 was for finding a creative way to write their word. After their collage was complete, I had them write on the back of their piece a list of ways they were going to achieve their goal. Their words were so varied, it was really exciting to see them share their word and get into the project. I really loved seeing what imagery they used and associated with their words. 

Some memorable words: dog (he plans to save up to get a dog), focus, creative writing, be brave (she wants to stand up to bullying at her school), dare, horses (she competes in equestrian competitions and wants to medal this year), and relax (he said he gets wound up in school so much he doesn't relax at all). I'm definitely going to keep this project around and hopefully find more ways to teach Melyssa's Creative Collective prompts! 

What's your word for the year? My word for 2014: intrepido (Italian for fearless!)