Valentine's Day Creative Play Areas

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I have no clue what to actually call this desk area that I set up for the kids. I just knew I needed an art area of some sort for the kids. I said to a friend of mine one afternoon, “I really want to find a free or cheap desk that I could use for an art area for the kids.” Literally about three hours later – I saw a free one on the Facebook Marketplace and picked it up the next day. I’ve been swapping out the stuff in my veggie tray container to go along with a theme or season because my youngest does art for hours a day. I went through my Valentine’s Day bin a few weeks ago and everything you see here was in that bin – it worked out so perfect! I imagine most of these things were picked up from the dollar store last year so it wasn’t very expensive to set up even if I had picked it up this year. Here’s what we have.

On the right side of the desk is the writing area. I have some wooden hearts, different ribbons, glue, play dough, glue and the pink, purple and red pens that came in this gel pen set I got for a great price last month. The cute wooden tray was in the bin as well and I imagine I bought it for a reason whenever I picked it up. The paper is in the top drawer of the desk so they can pull it out and it doesn’t take up the desk space.

On the left side is the art stuff. There are various heart shaped cookie cutters and a lips one. A bunch of different size foam stickers with XO and lips and tons of different colored foam heart stickers. Pink, white and red pom pom balls, some heart shaped gems from years ago and some cardboard hearts.

In the center is some large cardboard heart cutouts. I am excited to see what they make with them.

The wood hearts are from years ago – I made texture hearts when the kids were younger and every heart had a different type of fabric on it.

I honestly had plans to pick up a bunch of different art stuff for it but when I pulled out the bin and saw what I had – I figured it was enough for now. The play dough gets brough out almost daily. In a drawer thing next to the desk is a huge drawer of play dough tools – scissors, rolling pin, shape cutters, stampers, etc..

Because my Henry is a huge fan of sensory bins – I change out our sensory bins every few weeks or monthly. This month, we have a mix of different dry pastas dyed in red, pink and purple in one tray. We have a mix of different colored buttons in red and white in another. We still have our Floof out as well as a dyed salt tray from January because he was having so much fun with it. I usually have between two and four sensory bins out at a time with a variety of different tools to use with them.