This year, J’s teachers asked every parent to bring in Valentine’s Day gifts for all the kids in his class. They also asked for shoe boxes to use as mailboxes, and they were going to do a valentines exchange by putting the gifts into the mailboxes. I knew what this meant: candy overload. I wasn’t going to leave my kid without gifts to give to his classmates, but I was strongly against giving them even more candy than they were going to get. I also didn’t want to make this an expensive trip to the store.
So I set out to find the perfect cheap/free, non-sugary gift that was also not lame. What would preschoolers enjoy? I googled and I perused Pinterest only to find nothing that met my requirements. I did, however, get an idea for coloring pages, and eventually developed that idea into handmade coloring books. This is also great to have the little ones help out with, depending on their age and ability. Mine helped me with putting the pages together (and naming the animals on the pages), putting the stickers on, and filling out the To: and From:.
Materials
We had to make valentines for 20 kids, so this is what we needed. Feel free to scale up or down as necessary.
- Red card stock, 10 sheets
- White printer paper, 40 sheets
- Red yarn, ~320 inches (~27 yards)
- White yarn, ~320 inches (~27 yards)
- Large address labels, 2 sheets (10 labels per page)
- Stickers
- Hole punch or large needle
- Scissors
- Pen/crayons
Instructions
First, assemble your materials and be prepared, especially if your child is helping you. Their attention span is short and they will get bored if you don’t have your act together. Ask your child’s teacher/school if they have any card stock they can give you. I didn’t want to buy a whole pack just to use 10 sheets, so they gave me a handful and I even have some left over for future projects.
I printed the coloring pages and cut the paper and card stock in advance. I used a paper slicer to cut the pages, but scissors will work fine too, just a lot slower. For the pages, print each picture on a quarter of an 8.5×11 sheet (I made the layout in Photoshop and saved as a .pdf – you can also do this in many other programs, and Windows 7 will actually allow you to print 4 to a page right from the file explorer option to Print). Cut the paper and card stock into 4 pieces.
You can choose different colored yarn (or even ribbons), but I chose red and white to create a contrast and also because I had huge amounts of both. I thought about adding pink, but I only had a little left and didn’t think it would be enough. I also chose yarn because my stash is extensive and I don’t need to buy anything, and it holds better than ribbon, which is silky and tends to untie easily. Cut the yarn into ~8-inch strands.
Then, assemble the pages into sets. I had them sorted by the picture, so I laid out the first pages on the floor in rows. I gave my son the next page and told him to cover the first page with the second page and to make sure all were covered. I handed him one page at a time and he found a home for it. When all the pages were gone, we made sure we were not missing anything (sometimes he duplicated pages, so we had to find those and place them in the right pile) and then started with the next page, and so on until we had 20 books with 8 pages each.
Place one piece of card stock on the bottom, the pages on top of it (and since the card stock is a little bigger, in the center vertically and closer to the left edge), and cover with another piece of card stock. Carefully, without moving the sheets, either hole punch holes at the top and bottom of the left edge of the book, or thread a needle with both colors and poke holes through the book to pull the yarn through.
If you are using a hole punch (I realized mine was not strong enough to punch through even half of the book, so I used a needle), just slide the yarn through the holes. If using a needle, pull it all the way through the paper, leaving half the tail on the other side, and take the needle off the yarn.
Then, tie the yarn into bows, but either place something (like a pen or marker) into the loop or be careful to leave some room before the knot so that the pages have enough space to open freely. This is the effect I was trying to create and that is why I avoided using a stapler. I wanted the books to lay flat and the kids to not struggle with trying to keep the book open. So be sure not to tie it too close to the binding.
When the book is assembled, peel the address labels off and place them on the front cover of the books. If you wish, you can download a template for the labels you are using and print “To:” and “From:” on the labels, but I found it quicker to just write in pen. If your kid is careful, they can help with the labels.
When the labels are done, have your child stick some stickers on the cover, preferably love-themed. We used smiley faces, stars, flowers, and other more generic ones because we had too many stickers at home to buy specifically heart-shaped ones. But we also avoided those that felt totally out of place, like trains or “good job” ones.
Our teachers asked to fill out the “To:” and “From:” fields, so we used a red crayon to do that. I helped him for the most part, but there were a few letters that he likes to do himself.
There – not a penny spent on this project (just use of existing resources) and we did not contribute to more cavities.
You can also view this project on Pinterest.
