Valentine’s Day is all about celebrating love, so why not get the kids busy with some fun heart nature crafts to share their love of all things nature?
Making crafts from nature is a low cost, accessible and eco-friendly way to spend some time together as a family. And of course, it’s also a brilliant opportunity to help children learn about our amazing natural world and why it’s so important to take care of it.
Fun Valentine’s Day nature crafts for kids
This is a perfect time of year to spread the love with some heart-themed nature crafts. Kids can gift them to family members, or even leave them in your local community to send a little bit of joy out into the world.
Here are three simple ideas for Valentine’s Day nature crafts that use readily available natural materials. Make sure you check out my Mother’s Day nature crafts and Easter nature crafts posts for even more projects!
Heart nature collage
This is a lovely, simple way to combine a nature walk with some Valentine’s Day nature craft.
Children can collect fallen nature treasures during your walk, then use them to create some unique art when you get home. You don’t have to make a specific trip to collect your treasures (although that’s great too); you can do it on the school run, or during a visit to the local park.
It’s important to explain to kids that we need to protect nature by only choosing items that have fallen to the ground, and not picking things from plants and trees.
When you’re ready to make your nature art heart collage, simply cut a heart shape out of a piece of cardboard, then stick your nature treasures to it using glue or double sided sticky tape.
You might like to make a hole in the cardboard before you start, so that you can hang your collage up when it’s finished.
You could go big with your card heart and make a real impact, or create lots of little ones to decorate a twig tree. This is a lovely way to bring a little bit of nature indoors. Or perhaps you could hang your hearts in a tree in your neighbourhood for everyone to enjoy?
Heart bird feeders
This is a fantastic little nature activity for kids to get stuck into which will also help to support your local wild birds. In late winter their usual food sources are pretty scarce, so providing bird feeders in your garden or outdoor space will give wild birds a much-needed energy boost.
All you need is a heart-shaped cookie cutter, some bird seed, lard or solid vegetable fat, a stick, and some string. You can find full instructions on making your feeders in my homemade bird feeders post.
When your bird feeders are finished, you can hang them in a tree and watch all the birds who come to visit. This is another great opportunity to share the love by hanging them somewhere like your local park, or in a tree on your road.
For more bird-themed fun, head over to my family-friendly list of bird jokes.
Heart stones
We love making painted rocks, and this is a Valentine’s variation.
Start with a clean stone, and use paint pens or permanent markers to draw your heart pattern on the top. You can make the design as simple or as detailed as you like. These fabulous designs were made by Becky from A Beautiful Space and she has lots of other Valentine’s Day nature craft ideas for you to explore.
Once you’re happy with your design, add a coat of varnish to seal and protect it. When it’s dry, you can give it as a gift or leave it somewhere in your local area for others to find.
It’s so nice to think that your nature craft will be putting a smile on lots of faces, and you can explain to children how such a simple act of kindness can have a big, positive impact.
More brilliant nature crafts for the whole year
For lots more simple and fun ideas for crafting with nature and kids nature activities, take a look at my book *A Year of Nature Craft & Play. It’s filled with a whole year’s worth of eco-friendly crafts, games, science experiments and art projects to keep kids busy without breaking the bank. You can find out more about the book in my post on nature play.
You might also like to explore my roundup of spring nature crafts for kids and my list of fun Earth Day activities for kids.
Sharing your kids nature crafts on social media?
If you share your Valentine’s Day nature crafts (and nature projects in general) on social media you might find my roundup of beautiful nature captions a useful addition to your posts. Make sure you also check out my nature hashtags copy and paste lists – they’ll save you lots of time!
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