our love tree

I saw these Love Trees back in January, over at super-talented Jenny's Our Nifty Notebook, and I thought that Maddy, Owen, and Cora would love to do this.

And they did.

We worked on them over two days last week, and they each had a favorite part--from gathering sticks, to tracing the hearts, to glittering them up and punching the holes, to hanging them on the tree. This Love Tree is too cute.

Not to mention, this teach mama loves that this little tree requires practice on lots of important skills (fine motor work--tracing, cutting, punching, threading, twisting--writing names, and painting).

• Love Tree: Really, the Love Tree is just a bunch of sticks stuck in a pretty container, hung with construction paper hearts all shimmied up in glitter and names of people we love.
  

My kiddos would jump on any opportunity to decorate any kind of tree--even if the 'tree' is just sticks in an old candy tin. But this tree required some thinking, careful writing, and it speaks of the people we love.

What's not to like, and how could it be more perfect for Valentine's Day?

at first they were a bunch of plain, old sticks. . .

We started gathered sticks and put them in one of our sand buckets. Owen loved this part.

our heart patterns

Then we traced hearts onto construction paper and some random pieces of pink and red cardstock I had left, and we cut them out. Maddy loved the tracing, and Cora loved the cutting (or trying to).

The Love Tree Hearts are here to download if you'd like. (But really any hearts will do!)

Next, we wrote the names of people we loved on each heart.

Owen was stuck on writing only people whose names began with 'J'. I'm not sure why.

Maddy wrote Owen and Cora's names, then 'Mommy'. She spent most of her time decorating Joseph's heart. She loooooves Joesph.

Then the kiddos painted glitter on the hearts. I poured a bunch of white glue on the paint tray and then dumped red glitter on top.

The artists mixed the paint-glitter mix with their brushes and then decorated their hearts.

The next day, when all of the hearts were dry, Maddy and Owen punched holes in each heart.

Hole punching is a super way of working on fine motor skills; when Owen was having a tough time with his tripod grip last year, his teacher recommended having him punch holes for exercise.

He was hole-punch happy for quite some time, so he was all smiles when we brought this guy out.

Then I cut red and pink pipe cleaners in half, and Maddy, Owen, and Cora threaded a pipe cleaner through the hole in each heart.

After some twisting, the hearts were ready to be hung.

I put a couple heavy things (two rolls of coins and a rock) into the bottom of an old candy tin that we had downstairs, and we moved the sticks from the pail to their new home.

our finished Love Tree

Then we all hung our hearts on the tree, and by the end, it looked beautiful.

It's hardly complete--there are tons of people we'd love to have added, but for now, for the time we had on two cold winter afternoons, it seems complete.

And that's it--a sweet Valentine's Day decoration made with things we had around the house and lots of secret skill-building along the way. Thanks again, Jenny, for the great idea!