Cereal Box Valentines Mailbox Craft for Preschoolers

Our preschool crafts fun continues. We love Valentines mailbox ideas!! And this upcycled Cereal box valentine holder is no exception. A wonderfully easy Valentine’s day craft for preschoolers to make.

valentine's day mailbox for kids — This Valentine’s Preschool Craft was first shared in January 2015! And still as lovely as ever!

Today is another lovely guest post in our extensive Valentine Craft series here on Red Ted Art.

A big welcome today to Kristina from Toddler Approved, who shares this cute little Valentine’s Day Ideas for Preschoolers and toddlers. We are going to be making a Valentine Box for holding all those lovely cards and goodies and sending each other messages. A lovely little DIY for little ones.

This Valenine box would also make for a great classroom activity, as the boxes can be attached to the back of a child’s chair for easy depositing of Valentine’s Day mail!

Love that it is a great “upcycled” craft for a cereal box too and is so easy and fun to make for younger kids. Isn’t it just too cute? This joins a great collection of Valentine’s Mailbox ideas for you to browse!

What is a Valentine’s Day Box?

A Valentine’s Day Box is basically a way to both decorate for Valentines, as well as for children to collect Valentine’s Cards anonymously from their friends and family. It is a fun addition to any classroom party, or if you are celebrating at home with Family and siblings.

Cereal Box Valentine Holder / Valentine’s Mailbox

We love Valentine’s Day and finding ways to do small acts of kindness for others. We also love love love Maggy’s 31 Days of Love Series. I am Kristina of Toddler Approved. On my blog I share all sorts of movement and learning activities, crafts, and parenting tips that I discover as I try and be a better mom to my three kids (ages 6,4,2). Right now we are sharing a lot about kindness and love because we are in the middle of our annual 100 Acts of Kindness Challenge.

Last year we had so much fun sharing our heart mailboxes for Valentines with you. They really helped us be more kind in our home.

This year I am excited to share the Valentine’s Day mailbox chair backers that we created! It is perfect for holding lots of lovely Valentine’s Day Cards or Valentine’s Candy or small gifts!

As part of our 100 Acts of Kindness challenge we are working on doing simple acts of kindness each day around our home and community. As a family project we all created mailbox chair backers using cereal boxes and then we have been having fun sneaking little notes to each other using the mailboxes!

Cereal box valentine holder – Supplies needed

Get yourself ready for February and start collecting your supplies… to make mailboxes, we used

cereal box (or any other type of tall cardboard box)
wrapping paper or construction paper
scissors
stickers
eco friendly glitter (if you wish!)
markers or paints
glue or tape
favorite embellishments (stickers, pom poms, ribbon, streamers, paper heart or heart doily, etc.)
ribbon

Valentines Day Crafts for Preschoolers (2)

Here’s how to create your own mailbox chair backer…

First you’ll want to wrap up the cereal box using wrapping paper or brown paper so that the text on the cereal box isn’t visible. If you don’t have paper you could easily paint the box.

Next you can use your favorite embellishments to decorate your box. We went aheade and let our kindergartners and preschoolers go wild with the stickers and pom poms and heart doilys. Keep those little hands busy!

However, you can of course choose to decorate your box in any way you wish. E.g. love bugs or monster valentine box is super popular and a fun way to decorate for Valentine’s Day! You can also have some fun with fingerprints – put two fingers together and make some lovely little fingerprint hearts? Or maybe you fancy some cute Valentines Handprint ideas? One simple craft, lots of opportunities to personalise!

Valentines Day Crafts for Preschoolers (5) — Peeling stickers and placing them is great for fine motor skills development

Once your box is completely decorated and dry, make a slit or two in the back and thread ribbon through the back of the box so that the box can be tied to a doorknob or on the back of a chair.

So simple! Now you are ready for a class party. A cute heart craft and mail box to boot. The Valentines Box makes a great decoration for each chair.. and the kids can now go round and drop off their Valentine’s Day Cards they made earlier! Maybe they will get lucky Valentine’s Day Treats? I always think homemade treats are the best and we have some recipes for you to browse, though Candy always goes down well too or little toys and pencils.

If you are doing these at home, as soon as your boxes are hung, grab some paper and start writing some love notes to stick in the other boxes! It is a great opportunity to practice those writing skills with younger kids!

Have you created any Valentine’s mailboxes with your kids? I’d love to see what they look like! Pop by our Facebook page and tell me about them.

What should I put in My Valentines Mailbox?

There are lots of fun things you can put in a Valentine’s Mail box:

First and foremost a homemade Valentine’s Day Card is always popular
Friendship Bracelets are super sweet
Friendship Rocks or Heart Rocks are always great
Homemade Valentine’s Day Treat will never go a miss
Small toys are fun too!

As mentioned we have more fun DIY Valentine’s Box Ideas here, but we also have some ideas you can start thinking about:

e.g. two paper plates stuck together (with a slot open at the top) could work really well as a basketball valentine’s box, or soccer ball mail box
e.g. maybe use a shoebox and decorate it into a Llama valentine’s box and have it as a desktop mailbox
e.g. cut up tissue paper into small pieces (great for practicing those cutting skills) and glue onto a shoebox to decorate it – add large white eyes and you have yourself a simple Monster Valentine Box