Heart Bean Bags: A Fun Valentine’s Day Game

I am a room parent for my kindergartner. We decided to do a good ol’ fashion bean bag toss. The fun part? I’m making it all. Here is how you can make heart bean bags, the easy way.

Full disclosure… what started out as an easy sewing project ended up with me wanting to throw my mom’s sewing machine… #reallife!

It was a Saturday that Eddy was working so we went to play at my parent’s house for a few hours. While the big kids were out playing in the snow and my baby was napping I went to my mom’s sewing corner.

I though for sure this was going to be easy peasy, get it done really quick! I had gathered any fabric that was Valentine’s related from my stash of fabric. There was a bag of old rice that I found a few days earlier.

I was happy to not have to spend any money on this project. I did buy a foam board but found two cardboard pieces the same size so I’ll save the foam board for later.

Let’s Make Heart Bean Bags!

Want to make it super easy? Cut out your hearts free form! Here is how:

• Get the fabric you want and put together right sides out.
• Then fold in half.
• Last free hand cut your heart out. Make sure you cut ON the folded side.

What makes these heart bean bags very easy is that I am not turning them inside out, making it so the sewed edges are inside. Instead I’m keeping the raw sewing edges out and visible. Easy, right?

Turning each heart inside out and then sewing the little opening was not what I wanted to it.

Sew around the edge of your heart until you have a little bit left to sew. Insert a funnel and pour some rice into the funnel. Then take your heart bean bags back to the sewing machine and sew the rest of the heart closed.

You will want to make sure that the rice stays out of the way of the needle. Having a broken needle will not keep it easy.

Easy right?? Well, it should have been easy but the sewing machine kept getting stuck and would not sew past the first part. I spent more time fixing it then making my heart bean bags.

I ended up with 3. If I feel like getting super frustrated I’ll pull my sewing machine out and make a few more. 🙂

Or bring them back to your mom’s and mention that you are going to try sewing them again. If your mom is as awesome as mine is then she might offer to sew them for you. LET HER!

I sat on the floor getting hearts cut while my mom sewed. Then I would fill the hearts with rice and hand them back to her to sew the little opening closed.

That my friends, is how you make super duper easy heart bean bags! Thanks mom!! She saved me time and my sanity!

Now what are we going to do with these heart bean bags?

Let the kids throw them through some heart holes. FUN! With the two cardboard pieces that I saved from setting up my spin bike I cut three different size heart holes into each piece.

Then some of my kids were having a “moment” (okay, a full tantrum!). I had to reinforce the hearts and the middle of the cardboard. Someone took it and bent it in half…

That ended up being a fun night….NOT!

What you need next is some quick paint and your heart bean bag game is a go! In the future I might, MIGHT, get creative and make a board out of plywood. But that was not happening this year.

I didn’t even paint the whole cardboard piece like I thought I would. And I’m okay with how it turned out! Those cute 5 and 6 year old kiddos won’t even care.

Anyone else helping with Valentine’s Day parties??

Give this (mostly) easy and quick project a try. Or just buy some heart bean bags and make it even easier! Haha!

Let me know what fun ideas you are going to do with your kids, in your kids classes, or as a teacher in your classes this Valentine’s Day. 🙂

Need other inspiration? Here are some other fun Valentine’s Day posts: here for Pinterest, here, here, here, and here. The last one is with Halloween fabric but you can change it to any fabric for any holiday.

Xxx, Steph