We are already excitedly preparing for Valentine’s Day around here. The girls love making hearts and decorating them. I’ve been dying to hang up some contact paper for them to decorate. I finally remembered to buy some at the store. Yay for me! And we got to work.

I cut out a heart frame from a piece of construction paper and taped that to the window first to be a guide. I taped the contact paper, sticky side out, over the heart. Then I dumped the tissue squares I bought years ago from Oriental Trading Company on a little table. Then it was the kids’ turn. And they jumped right to it.

Elli immediately began filling in he heart. She placed 5 squares on and then called it good. I encouraged her to cover all of the stickiness and make it a mosaic. I figured if she said she was done I’d leave it at that, but she accepted my request and completely covered everything inside the heart.

Scott had a lot of fun exploring the stickiness. He also thought the tissue squares were fun to drop and watch float to the ground. He eventually decided to stick some to the paper. He preferred to have me hand him the squares. I asked him if he wanted a green square or a purple square as a way to bring color word association into our activity. He calls everything pink (thanks to two older sisters!) but prefers the color green.

When Sammi came home she really wanted to make one, too. I just moved Scott’s paper to a different window and put up a new piece of contact paper over the black heart frame. She had so much fun with creating a scene and incorporating texture into her project. She gave her heart a face with a winking eye and eyelashes. Her heart also has hair and legs and is standing in grass. It’s so fun to see her art become more complex as she gets older.

When Elli’s heart was done, I glued the red heart frame to the front of the paper and we painted glue over it to secure down the overlapping tissue squares. It gave it a nice glossy look. Her plan is to cut it out and give it to Daddy for Valentine’s Day.

In hindsight, I would stick the heart frame to the sticky side. I think it would be easier to finish up if we didn’t have to place it again over the top of the tissue paper. But initially I didn’t want it to be covered with tissue paper. Another idea I thought of after the fact was covering Elli’s heart with another piece of contact paper so the heart was “laminated” to hold the unstuck tissue paper in place. But the modge podge was a fun and fine motor skill building step. Also, the texture Sammi added to her heart made it difficult to finish off. There are still sticky parts that I don’t know how to cover. Because of how she placed the hair I can’t move the heart frame to the front side like I did with Elli’s. For now it’s just displayed in our window while I continue to problem solve the situation. Any suggestions are welcome 🙂