Crocodile (or Alligator) Valentines and Box

 My daughter loves animals, especially green ones.  This year she wanted to make an alligator Crocodile Valentine's Day mailbox, which I kept accidentally calling an alligator.  She thought it was hilarious.  Obviously this is a crocodile, not an alligator, right?

 Basically it's just a shoe box.  We cut out the mouth, eyes, and tail from another box and taped them on before spray painting the whole thing light green.  Then I gave my daughter a piece of bubble wrap and three colors of green craft paint and she stamped the scales on the alligator.  She just brushed the paint onto the bubble wrap with a foam brush and pressed it onto the box.  She added some wiggle line "spikies" with the foam brush after it was all stamped.

We forgot to put feet on before spraying it, and she didn't buy my explanation that it's because it's swimming and you can't see the feet, so she put on little green foam feet afterward.

The tongue (you can't really see it in the pics) is shaped like a heart and cut out of pink craft foam.  The teeth are also craft foam hot glued on.  She cut out her name from the same pink craft foam.

The valentine "card" she is passing out in class are these little clothespin baby alligators crocodiles.

 I gave her the same green paints and a foam brush and she painted all 20 clothespins various shades of green.  I cut out the spikes with pinking shears and craft foam.  I hotglued those and the eyes on.

 Each crocodile is biting a Smarties® candy wrapped with a piece of paper that says, 

"Have a Snappy Valentine's Day!" 

 Alternatively you could do, 

"I'd snap at the chance to be your Valentine!"

Owl Tree Valentines Box from an Oatmeal Can

Here's my daughter's Valentine's Day mailbox creation!  She used it in Kindergarten.  We had a lot of fun making it together.  I love that with an oatmeal can you can pop off the top when your child gets home so you have easy access to the cards and goodies inside.

 

To make your own Owl Tree Valentine's Box, you need:

• an empty oatmeal can
• branches (either a cardboard tube of glowsticks, or a paper towel tube or toilet paper tubes)
• brown craft paint (we used both brown and tan paint)
• craft foam sheets, or construction paper (green, red, pink, orange, black)
• hot glue

Since my daughter gave out glowstick bracelets with her valentines' cards, we already had a tube to use for the branches.  We found the bracelets in the dollar section at Target and they look like this:

If you don't have that, then use a paper towel roll or some toilet paper rolls instead.  All you have to do is cut the tube in half on a diagonal (so your branches will be angled up).  The black wrapper on the tube peels off easily.

Hot glue those onto the oatmeal can.  (Actually in hindsight I might try something stronger that hot glue, like E-6000 maybe.   One branch fell off at school).

Cut a hole in the oatmeal can.  I recommend making it big because with Pinterest you never know what kinds of big crazy valentine's creations your kid is going to get.

Then paint the whole thing brown.  I just dipped the brush in both tan and brown to give it a streaky brown wood look.

Then I had my daughter write her name and draw leaves and hearts on the foam craft sheets. I helped her cut them out.  She liked making "heart fruits" to go on the tree.  I just free-handed the owl.  Use a hole punch to make the eyes really round.

Then glue it all on.  My daughter liked finding places to stick everything.

Happy Valentine's Day!