With Valentine’s Day around the corner, my little guy and I spent some time yesterday making cards. We usually pick up a package or two of the premade cards at the store for the classroom exchanges.  But this year, we decided to change things up and make the cards ourselves.

My little guy loves doing crafts, so when I proposed making cards, he was on board right away. With owls as our theme, the ideas on how to design the card began forming in mind early last week, and by Friday, I had my templates and supplies ready to begin working on the cards.

Yesterday, we made almost 40 cards! We listened to the Magic Tree House on audiobook as we assembled the cards. Oh, what a wonderful time we had working together on this project! At one point, my little guy said this was the best project ever. That made me smile. It was definitely worth the extra work.

So I thought I’d share with you how we made the cards.

Supplies (for 6 cards):

• 2 sheets of brown card stock or construction paper (for the owls)
• 1 sheet of orange card stock or construction paper (for the beaks)
• 1 sheet of red card stock or construction paper (for the hearts)
• 3 sheets of card stock or construction paper in the color of your choice (for the cards)
• Owl Template
• You’re a Hoot Card Template
• 12- 28 mm wiggle eyes
• glitter (to decorate owl)
• glue stick
• 6 Tootsie Pops (optional)

Assembly Instructions:

(1) Copy owl template onto brown paper. Cut out owls.

(2) Copy card template on paper in the color of your choice. Cut out the cards.

(3) With the orange paper, cut out 6 small triangles for the beaks.

(4) With the red paper, cut out 18 small hearts. (I did it the old fashioned way, folding the paper in half and cut a half heart. My hearts weren’t uniform in size, but it worked fine for the card. :0)

(5) Glue owl onto front of card, positioning the owl toward the top of the card to give space for the hearts between the owl and the card message.

(6) Determine the positioning of the beak and eyes. Glue the beak first, then glue the eyes.

(7) Glue three hearts at the bottom center of the owl.

(8) Apply glue to the two outer wings and sprinkle glitter on the wings.

(9) Tape the Tootsie Pops (if including) to the backside of the cards.

We also added a Knock Knock joke to the back of the card and owl stickers, but you can add whatever you’d like. Most importantly, have a good time making these with your little ones!