DLTK's Holiday Crafts for Kids
Fingerprint Love Bug Craft

This can easily be modified into a non Valentine's Day insect project.  Just use brown or some other insect coloured paint.

This is a nice easy fingerprint craft with a little poem to accompany it.  This project works well for all ages and allows children to exercise their creativity.  You can turn it into a Valentine's Card for Mom and Dad or make a picture to hang on the wall.

Materials:

• Red, white, purple, and/or pink tempra paints (not too thick).
• Red, pink, purple or white construction paper.

Instructions:

• Have child dip their fingertip into the paint (you might want to test this yourself a few times to get the paint consistency right... you want it thick enough to hold the shape and thin enough to show that it's a fingerprint).
• Make some fingerprint marks on the construction paper.
• Use all 5 fingers for different sized bugs.
• When the paint dries, draw little legs on the fingerprints to make Love Bugs.  An adult may need to do this step for younger children.  Older kids can do it themselves.
• Decorate further with green tissue paper grass and cotton ball clouds or pick the best bug and cut out a heart shape around it to make a Valentine's Card.
• Other ideas include:
  • making a fingerprint and overlapping with another fingerprint slightly off center...  This sometimes looks like a heart and sometimes looks like a bug with it's wings spread.
  • putting two paint colours (red and white work well) in a plate and swirling them with a pencil or craft stick.  The fingerprints then come out multi coloured.
  • making a pinky fingerprint as a flower center and thumbprints around as the petals.
• Add a poem if you like

Here's a little Love Bug
to watch over you.
You love him
and he'll love you too!

HAPPY VALENTINE's DAY