So I was trying to find a good Valentine’s craft that wasn’t all pink or a card and I found the best thing on Pinterest (obviously!)

In finding a great craft, I also discovered a book I had never heard of and in fact, found the best Valentine’s Day story time ever.

The image from Pinterest lead me to a great blog called Storytime ABC’s. Where I discovered the book My Heart is Like a Zoo by Michael Hall. Perfect for Valentine’s Day because, as you can see, the lion on the cover is made entirely of paper hearts. And such a great book for storytime! It’s short enough to keep 2 & 3 year olds interested, and asking them what sound the animal makes is always helpful if they get a bit wiggly. For the older ones, it’s fun to have them guess what the animals are. The lion is easy enough, but not all the animals are as well-known.

In addition to reading the book, I made a flannel board of as many animals as I had time to make (the night before.) I passed out the animals to the kids and when they came up in the course of the story, I had the kids bring up the animal and stick it on the board. Of course, some kids can’t wait, or like to take other kids animals off the board, but I just go with it 🙂

flannel board for My Heart is Like a Zoo

For the craft, we made lion and penguin puppets. I pre-cut all the hearts for each animal and also made a mini poster showing how to put each one together step by step. (I did the mini poster for the Wednesday class, as the Monday class was a bit confusing!) Sometimes I forget that non-crafty mom’s don’t always see things the way I do! Sadly, my Monday class is the “guinea pig” group. Below are some pictures of how the animals came out – very cute! All in all, a great non-Valentine’s-ish Valentine’s story time 🙂