Valentine's Day Heart Collage Art

Last Updated on February 1, 2025 by Sheryl Cooper

Inside: This Valentine’s Day heart collage art is super simple and fun for toddlers and preschoolers. Squeezing glue and pressing on the pieces strengthens fine motor skills, too!

There are so many fun Valentine’s Day crafts that my students have enjoyed over the years. However, crafts can be time-consuming with the extra preparation involved. Plus, this year my students are younger, with shorter attention spans.

I decided to put together a collage activity using heart doilies and other pieces I found in our scrap bin.

Unlike a craft, this was more of a process art idea where the children could add their own touches.

Each heart had it’s own look – no two alike – and they looked so sweet hanging on our classroom wall.

If you are looking for simple and fun, add this to your Valentine’s Day theme ideas!

It’s so easy to overthink art activities.

In my 25 years of teaching, I’ve been guilty of putting together elaborate ideas that ended up taking more time to put together than actually creating.

I would take everything home and prep on my own time, then having to lug it all back to my classroom.

Eventually I discovered that the more time I put into planning and prepping, the less the children seemed to enjoy the activity.

Or maybe that was because I was expecting more out of the project since I have devoted so much time to it.

I started taking a good look at what my students loved, and that was simple ideas where they could add their own touches, not mine.

This activity was the result of digging through our Valentine’s Day theme bin and pulling out pieces that I decided could be used at the art table.

I didn’t have to go out and buy anything.

I didn’t have to take materials home to prep first. (Hooray!)

I simply put everything on the art table, tinted the glue with tempera paint, and invited the children to create.

Yes, it was that easy! Let me show you what we did.

Valentine’s Day Heart Collage Art

Materials Used

White heavy (card stock) paper
Heart doilies
Red paper or foil gift bag filler
Foam hearts
Scraps of paper
White glue (that I added some tempera paint to)

The beauty of this activity is that you can alter this to use what you already have on hand. Collage activities are a wonderful way to use leftovers!

Preparation

I gathered all of my materials and placed them in individual containers, one for each child. I simply placed a little of everything in each one so that the children could then decide what they wanted to add to their paper.

I placed an art tray at each spot and then added the sheet of paper, glue, and container of materials.

A note about the glue:

While you could pour glue into individual containers and add paintbrushes, I decided to use individual squeeze bottles of glue.

I love offering bottles of glue to the children because it adds hand strengthening to the activity.

I tend to have an assortment of tinted glue in our cabinet, leftover from previous art activities. In this case, I had bottles of yellow, purple, and pink glue.

To tint glue, add a dollop of tempera paint. It’s that easy!