My first grade boy loves his classmates but he clearly will let you know that he does not LOVE any of them.
Since he was in religious school for preschool and Kindergarten, he has not had the experience of Valentine’s Day in school yet. He is a little puzzled by the whole idea, and I thought that taking some time to handcraft some Valentines together might help him understand how the day is all about letting the people that are important to you know how you feel with a little card, a kind hello, yummy candy, or a little trinket.
My son is really into games like chess and tic-tac-toe, so I took inspiration from some tic-tac-toe bags that I have seen floating around crafter’s boards and I put my own spin on it – adding names and a free printable valentine for you!
My beloved Silhouette CAMEO helped me bring this project to life. I started by ungrouping the board from the “tic tac toe cut out card” file and tiled it to fit 25 tic tac toe boards with minimal empty space.
These boards were cut on heat transfer vinyl and then heat pressed onto little muslin bags. I also added their names in the flocked heat transfer vinyl that Silhouette sent over the holidays. I love Silhouette brand’s heat transfer vinyl – I use it on the boys’ shirts all of the time and it washes great!
Next I added multiple copies of the echo park heart file (enough hearts for 5 hearts per child) and I added X’s in a similar size (5 X’s per child).
I cut these on permanent vinyl so that I could stick them on the stones you use at the bottom of a fish bowl. I found these at the dollar store.
You’ll want to add 5 of each type of game piece to the bag so that there are enough to complete the game no matter whether X’s or O’s starts first.
My son signed the printable tags and I slipped those and the game pieces into the personalized muslin bags and cinched the top.
Perfect Valentines for my not-so-mushy big boy to pass out this year!
Want the printable for the tags? Click the image below to get the file for free!
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