Valentine’s Day Art for Toddlers (Painting Hearts with Cars)

Last Updated on January 29, 2024 by Sheryl Cooper

Inside: Valentine’s Day art for toddlers is super fun when it involves driving cars through paint, and then onto hearts. A fun process art activity that also builds fine motor skills!

Toddlers love to paint with cars.

If you haven’t tried this yet, you must!

I have yet to know a class of toddlers who don’t love to roll paint through paint and then onto paper.

In fact, you might recall when we we drove cars through different colors of paint to make a rainbow.

Or the time when we rolled our Duplo trains through paint, leaving fun tracks on the paper.

Every single time we’ve used this method it has been embraced with huge smiles from our toddlers.

So this time we added paper hearts and added it to our Valentine’s theme!

Valentine’s Day Art for Toddlers

Let’s be honest.

So many holiday crafts, Valentine’s Day included, are teacher directed.

After 2 decades of teaching, I’ve come to realize that toddlers do not care about the final product. What they love most is the activity itself.

So I take that into consideration every time I plan an activity.

Even if it is a bit crafty, such as our Valentine suncatchers,  I make sure to make it as open ended as possible.

So when I observed that this year’s class had a fascination with cars, I decided to ditch the paintbrushes and replace them with wheels.

Wheels on our toy cars, that is.

Supplies:

• White paper cut into heart shapes
• Red and/or pink paint
• Toy cars (We loved how these cars fit into their small hands)

How to:

Place the heart-shaped paper on the table. Pour paint into a dishes, add 1 car per dish, and place it on the table beside the paper heart.

As your toddlers approach the art table, tell them that they will be driving their cars on top of the hearts.

NOTE: We covered the table with butcher paper because we’ve observed over the years that toddlers want to just keep on going. They love to make big movements, which means they will most likely paint beyond their piece of work.

Truly, there isn’t much instruction or supervision needed because it’s so simple.

Dip the car into the paint and then onto the paper.

Over and over again.

And while we don’t need to be hovering over our toddlers, showing them how it “needs” to be done, I still love to be close so that I can observe.

Our toddlers were quite satisfied to dip the cars into the paint, roll them on the paper heart (and beyond), and repeat the process.

Many times.

And when they were finished, they simply got up from their seats, washed hands, and moved on.

Because that is what toddlers do!

Once dry, these make a nice classroom decoration. We strung ours across our big window!

More Valentine’s Day fun:

15 of the Best Toddler Valentine Crafts