Climbing Heart Monster: Valentine Craft for Kids

Valentines is coming fast and if you’re looking for a fun craft or activity to do with your kids this is it. This Heart Monster is the perfect Valentine’s Day Kids craft and activity all rolled into one.

Quick and Easy Snowflakes from a brown paper bag

We made our first heart monsters for Valentine’s when my oldest was a toddler and now it’s a favorite Valentine’s day craft.

The kids love making their own heart monsters any way they want. They love adding tons of eyes and getting creative. But the best part about this craft is that it’s even more fun once you’re heart monster is all put together.

My kids love making their heart monster climb, it really is so fun to see their creation climb up the strings.

When we made our first Valentine’s Day heart monsters we just cut out hearts from construction paper, made them into monsters and that was it.

While you can definitely still do that we have figured out how to make this craft even cuter and more fun.

I created a free printable template that makes this craft so much easier. We have also made it so our heart monsters climb. Yep, that’s right using yarn or any other kind of string and a doorknob, we can make these heart monsters climb up the door.

Supplies:

Cardstock (We like using red but you can use any color you want)
Glue
Googly Eyes
Pen /Marker/ Crayon
Printable Heart for the Body of Your Monster
Plastic Straw
String
Construction Paper or other Craft Paper
Tape
Foam Heart Stickers (Optional)

Free Printable

Click the link below to download the simple heart shape that we used to make our heart monster.

heart-monster-body-printable Download

How to Make a Heart Monster

Making these Heart Monsters is fast and easy. It’s a fun craft for all ages. Toddlers with lots of wiggles and short attention spans will love it, as will older kids who can spend more time on the details of their monsters.

Before You Start

Before you start making your monster craft print out the heart printable at the bottom of this post on cardstock. We printed ours on red cardstock but you can use any color you want.

The printable has 2 hearts per page so you can make 2 monsters with 1 sheet of paper.

If you don’t want to use the printable to print out the heart you can always freehand cutting out a large heart to use as the body of your heart monster.

Preparing for Younger Kids

If you’re doing this craft with younger kids I recommend getting all the cutting done before you start the project, but for older kids you can let them help you cut things out.

Making Your Monster

Cutting Everything

First, you’re going to get all of the cutting done. You need to cut out the body of your heart monster using the heart you previously printed. You also need to cut out smaller hearts for hands and feet and strips for the legs and arms.

For the smaller hearts we used the old fold and cut method to cut out hearts from construction paper and the scrap paper from the heart we printed out.

making heart monsters Kids valentines craft

We used construction paper to make strips for the legs and arms of our monsters. We cut 3 strips that were about an inch wide and 9 inches long. Then we cut one of those strips in half so that the arms were half the length of the legs.

Like I mentioned above if you’re making this craft with younger kids I would wait until after I had everything out and ready before having the kids come to make their heart monsters.

Putting It Together

Now that you have everything cut out it’s time to put together your heart monster.

ready to add the arms and legs to the heart monster

Using the big heart as the head and body of your monster add googly eyes and a mouth or anything else you want.

There is no wrong way to make these cute monsters. So just let your little one have fun!

Once the body of your monster is created it’s time to add the arms and legs. We accordion folded the strips of paper and then attached the two shorter strips to the sides of the heart for arms and the longer ones to the bottom sides of the heart for legs.

You can leave it at that our if your kids are like mine they want the monsters to have hands and feet. For the hands and feet we used the fold and cut method to cut out smaller hearts for them to use for hands and feet.

Now I’m sure your heart monster is looking cute and you can stop here if you want. But it’s only a couple more steps to get your heart monster ready to climb a door.

Adding the “Climbing Gear”

For the climbing gear you need two pieces of a plastic straw about an inch long, string and tape. Oh and we used some foam heart stickers but that’s totally optional.

Flip over your heart monster and tape the two pieces of plastic straw next to each other on the back of your monster in the center. It can be the top or middle center whichever you want.

Make sure that the tape doesn’t cover the ends of the straws you need to be able to put a string through the straws.

Measure and cut the string you want it to hang from the doorknob or hinge. Measure how long you want the string and make sure it’s double before cutting it.

I wrapped tape around one end of the string to make it easy to push through the straw. Then pushed it up through one straw toward the top of the heart and back down the other.

This makes a loop at the top of the heart, perfect for hanging on a door.

Now either tie some big knots at the end of the strings or you can put two foam heart stickers back to back with the string in the middle. This makes it so that the string won’t go all the way through the straws.

That’s it your heart monster is ready to climb.