Need Ideas for Preschool Young 3 Valentine's Day Party

My son made the cutest gift in school for our "parent gift" at Christmas time.
His teacher's used clear plastic 4x6 frames and had the children add foam stickers all the way around the outer edge. You could adapt this idea by getting by using heart shaped foam stickers in pink, red purple and white. (I found a huge container like this last year at walgreens)

His teacher put a picture in the frame and then they wrapped it in a decorated white "lunch bag".
As for the picture, you could send a disposable camera to school with your child and ask the teacher to take a picture of each child with it, then return it at the end of the week (So they have time to take a picture of all the children, especially if it's a daycare/preschool situation) You would have each child's picture developed and ready for the party.

I was a room mother when my kids were younger and I had them one year collect toliet paper rolls the remaining cardboard when the roll was done and fill them with candy and put red cellephane around them and tied the ends. It was kinda like a popper. The kids loved them and the cost was less then $10.00 for a class of 25.

check out Family Fun magazine or their website. I was just looking at it last night.

1. have the kids put on a play (with you narrating so it has a plot and actually ends heehee) about love and friendship.

2. decorating heart-shaped cookies (you can make the cookies and they just do the decorating and can take them home with them or eat them there)

3. cutting hearts with doilies, foam heart stickers, etc. which you can get from the craft store, and put ribbon hangers on them so they can be hung on doorknobs or something

When my boys were in preschool, they made crayon hearts for their friends to pass out on Valentine's Day. You'll need a silicone heart-shaped muffin tray (I think we found ours at Michaels or Hobby Lobby) and a lot of broken crayons (which wasn't a problem at our house!). Just peel the paper from the crayons, fill up the hearts in the silicone tray & put the tray on a cookie sheet. Bake in the oven on a low temp (maybe 200-250) for 5-10 minutes until they melt. Let cool completely and you've got multi-colored heart-shaped crayons. I think this was in Family Fun about 1-2 years ago. You can also check their website - they always seem to have a lot of fun and easy ideas. Good luck!

There were a couple years that my children made small heart picture frames, using fun foam. We just cut out a small rectangle for the picture and decorated a heart-shaped frame. Another cute craft was to use tiny puzzle pieces and we created a broche/pin. I think they were spray-painted in advance so the red color was translucent and the puzzle colors made it look like various shades of red. The pieces were glued together into a heart shape (we xeroxed heart shapes and they used that as a guide to make a heart and used glue dots to glue each piece onto another) Then you buy adhesive pin backs at Michael's and attach them to the back.

Games to play: Find the paper hearts - hide many, many, paper hearts around the room and put a sticker on four or five of the hearts. One award goes to the person who has the most paper hearts and other awards go to who has found a sticker heart (one prize per person). Also, a cute game is "the charm game" Attach a tiny heart charm on a a piece of yarn or thin string (something that a charm easily slide on). This string should be large enough to accommodate at least 10 children in a circle - or larger depending on the size of your playgroup. The string has to be knotted at one side and the charm has to be able to slide over the knot easily. One child is picked as the "center person". The "center child" closes their eyes. The music starts, the children-in-the-round have to hold the string with both hands (all hands in the same direction) and pass the charm on the string, when the music stops, the child who has the charm must conceal the charm in their hands and ALL of the children have to pretend THEY are holding the charm too. The center child picks the person, they think, is holding the charm - the charm holder gets a small token prize if they "fool" the person. If the "center person" picks correctly, they get the small token (or....because they are preschoolers - EVERYONE gets a prize!) You can determine what is fair as far as who should go in the middle and when.

Have fun!