Valentine’s Day is upon us and that means it’s time to think of some sweet treats for your littlest Valentine. If you are looking to be a little crafty this year, I’ve put together some of my favorite special treats for kids. You can make these for just your kids or if you are really ambitious, they make great gifts for a classroom party.
While these gifts are sweet, they are not packed with sugar. You can even make them a little healthier with a few substitutions and by cutting out the chocolates.
And if you are looking for a candy-free (and allergy friendly) option, I’ve included that as well!
Tomorrow on Valentine’s Day ( February 14, 2019) at 11:30 a.m., I’ll be on the NBC show CT Live with a demonstration of how to make the Valentine Choo-Choo, so make sure to check us out!
Applesauce Love Bugs
I will start you off simple with an applesauce treat – the love bug! This is super easy and will make your littlest Valentine smile when he has snack time.
You’ll need a small list of supplies for this craft:
- Applesauce (for an even cuter look, try to get strawberry applesauce!)
- Foam hearts
- Pipe Cleaners
- Pom Poms
- Googly Eyes
Besides the applesauce, I found all of my supplies at the Dollar tree. If you are looking to make these in bulk, they would be super affordable.
Everything is glued on with a hot glue gun. Just be careful when working with hot glue!
Valentine Choo-Choo Train
We’re all about the trains in our house – and of course, we have to make Valentine’s Day trains. You can also be creative and turn these into race cars as well. What I like about juice box treats is that they are so versatile. You can use any juice box brand, you can switch out candies or snacks, you can make it healthy or a little sweet.
For our trains, we used:
- Juice Box
- Two boxes of raisins (another option are the small boxes of Nerds)
- Four Rolos (any round candy works including Reese’s Miniatures, if you don’t have a nut allergy; or even starlight mints)
- Hershey Kisses
You can add even more with foam or chocolate hearts, ribbon and tags. I find that the glue gun does work just fine on the juice box but you can also get away with glue dots for this assembly.
You can check out our more detailed post on this craft from 2017 here!
Juice Box Robot
I love this new idea! Last year we made juice box robots but this year, I decided to try robots! It works on the same concept as the train with a juice box as your base. But you can get so creative with the robots. Applesauce is a healthy choice for your robots head, but even a pudding cup would work. As long as you add those eyes, you can definitely tell what this is!
Arms can be in the form of raisins or you can make them the feet. If you want to make it a little sweeter, sweeties make perfect arms. A chocolate heart in the center of the juice box and a lollipop can be be a sweet final touch for your Valentine’s Day.
For our robots, we used:
- Juice Box
- Two boxes of Raisins
- Applesauce Cup (Pudding cups would work too)
- Googly eyes
- Chocolate heart
- Lollipop
- Hershey Kiss
The robots can be tailored to whatever candy you have on hand – be creative, you really can’t go wrong when making these little guys!
Juice Box Robot (allergy friendly)
I also wanted to include an option for a candy/snack free Valentine! When making treats for a classroom, this can be a great alternative. There are many options for making this robot but for ours we used:
- Juice Box
- Foam hearts (feet)
- Heart-shaped slinkies
- Heart-shaped Putty (with the eyes included)
- Heart-shaped Maze
I found all of these toys at the Dollar Tree. I had an idea of what I was looking for but ended up buying things I never expected. The putty with the eyes was an awesome find, as were the heart-shaped slinkies. The puzzles were part of a Valentine card that I popped off. It’s so easy to get wrapped up in an exact plan (trust me, I do it all the time) but sometimes when we let ourselves look around and be creative, we make something even better than we expected!
Have a great Valentine’s Day with your little sweethearts – and if you get to make a craft, let us know! We’d love to see what you make!
