Valentine Paper Crafts for Lower Elementary

Here are some adorable Valentine crafts that were made by our younger students who are in the After-Care program. They make such cute holidays crafts and they always bring a smile to my face!

 

Painted Paper Woven Hearts

This is a fun but time consuming lesson- great for Valentine's Day.

I was inspired by a lesson found posted on the now defunct

Los Cerros Middle School art page in California. I teach this lesson to Grade 4,5,6 students.

Find all the steps when I posted previously about this 14 years ago (!!) HERE. 

To make it go faster, use smaller paper!  

This time we used 9 x 12" heavy white paper and tempera paint. 

Grade 4,5,6 results:

 

James Goldcrown style Heart Collage

Street artist James Goldcrown  (@jgoldcrown) was the artist inspiration for the Valentines themed heart collage. 

I found the project idea HERE and just switched up the artist to James Goldcrown.

Born in West London, Goldcrown is a self-taught artist/photographer now based in Los Angeles. He is most famous for his Bleeding Hearts/Lovewall murals which started showing up everywhere on Instagram back in 2015. 

See all the steps that I posted previously about HERE. 

We started by looking at photos of his art, then watched a Youtube video interviewing him about his collaboration with Sketchers shoes. One of my students was actually wearing a pair!

I think one of the keys to this project is using really true black construction paper. Tu Ray and Crayola make good ones. I sometimes also buy a rich black cardstock from Michaels or Wal Mart.

This is a great lesson for reinforcing and practicing good cutting and gluing skills. 

Some finished Grade 4 - 6 artworks!

 

Ice Sculptures

We're in the midst of a deep freeze here where I live in Canada. So I thought it appropriate to post these ice sculptures some Grade 4,5,6 students made with myself and a Music teacher at my school. He makes elaborate ice sculptures at his house, so wanted to teach our students how to make some simple ones. 

One of the challenges of this project is that you need to have extended cold weather in order to have enough time to freeze all the water, assemble the sculptures and then have time to enjoy them!

The kids and teachers collected plastic forms that we could use as molds.

We filled balloons with water and hung them on a rope so they would freeze in teardrop shapes. We also filled and froze foil balloon letters so we could write the name of our school outside.

Here's how we made some short candles to line the walkway to our school:

Home Depot plastic buckets were filled with coloured water and froze. Kids flipped them over and stomped on them to release the block.

You can stack one on top of another to make taller candles.

Then use wet snow as glue/mortar.

Add the balloon 'flame' on top.

  

We also made an Elsa/Frozen inspired castle. We froze water in a bunch of random plastic containers. 

Then unmolded them.

Then we had a backdrop built, the kids painted it blue, and they assembles the frozen pieces in tower formations. Unfortunately, at this point, the weather started warming up, so I only got some melted pics!