Book of the Week: The Day it Rained Hearts by Felicia Bond

This project was inspired by the book, The Day it Rained Hearts by Felicia Bond.

Materials Needed:

- sharpie

- sponge

- scissors

- large drawing paper

- cardstock or construction paper (we used purple and pink)

- paint (we used white and red to make pink)

- glue

- heart stickers

Directions:

1. Draw a heart on your sponge with a sharpie and then cut it out.

2. Trace your hand and part of your arm onto a piece of cardstock (my son traced mine and I traced his). This will make your trees.

3. Cut out the trees.

4. Glue the trees onto a large piece of drawing paper or cardstock. We used both.

5. Press it down and let it dry! My son is still learning about where the ground is 🙂 his tree is floating a little bit.

6. Add some heart stickers to your trees. They will be your leaves (similar to the last page of the raining hearts book). My little guy liked counting each sticker as he put them on each finger and he only wanted to put 5 stickers on his tree because there were only 5 branches. 🙂

7. Use your heart sponge and paint and stamp some more heart leaves onto your tree branches.

In addition to our initial heart tree (which got us warmed up), we created some heart rain on a large piece of drawing paper using our heart stamps.

1. First we stamped hearts all over the paper.

2. Then we traced and cut out some more hand trees.

3. And finally we added some heart stickers as more heart leaves.

My little guy also enjoyed using his fingers as heart stamps for a few of the raindrops.

In addition to reading the story and doing this project, we also talked a lot about all of the friends that Cornelia Augusta (the main character) gave valentines to. She made several really cool valentines for her friends mouse, turtle, dog, and rabbit. We will be using her creative ideas on another day to make even more cards for our friends!

Have you read this book before with your kids? What are your favorite related projects?