Celebrating Valentine’s Day with Little Ones

Valentine’s Day is a great opportunity to show your little ones you love them and in turn show them how to share that love with others. With four kids running around our home, it can be difficult to make everyone feel special every day. Here are some ways that I have been intentional in loving my precious kiddos on Valentine’s Day. 

  1. Write Love Letters:

This can be done very simply, or feel free to dig into the craft cupboard. I chose to order this sweet candy heart Valentine paper to write my letters: https://amzn.to/2S5JEHk. For each one of my kids, I wrote a love letter highlighting one special moment I cherished with them, one character quality I feel they really exemplify, a compliment about something in which they really excel, and one way I have seen them love others well. It is so fun to see them read these notes (or watch their face as I read it to them.) They tend to keep my notes tucked away and I hope that it will continue to make them feel loved. 

  1. Bake Sugar Cookies Together:

Baking cookies together always seems to go much better in my head than when I am in the actual kitchen with my four kids. However, it is something they really enjoy doing and even though the results aren’t super beautiful, we are able to spend some quality time together! I have found a cookie and frosting recipe that turns out so well; soft and sweet. The full recipe can be found here: www.theyummylife.com/Sour_Cream_Sugar_Cookies. After we finish decorating the cookies, we slip them (well, the ones that look decent or that we didn’t eat) into cute bags from Hobby Lobby and deliver them to neighbors. It is a great way to stay in touch through these cold winter months and teaches our kids to introduce themselves, answer simple questions, and think of others. 

  1. Create a Compliment Box:

These boxes are typically used for classroom valentines, but I figured we could extend their use by calling them “compliment boxes.” Dig out the stickers, glitter, and paint pens and let the kid’s express their creativity! Our boxes came from Hobby Lobby, as did some of our decorations, others are from the Dollar Tree. The paint pens are a must have! The fun of paint, but lacking in the mess department. They can be purchased from Amazon (https://amzn.to/2S4ubHv). The kids can use these boxes in their classrooms, but then we leave them out for the remainder of the month. Both parents and siblings can write down compliments on an index card (we use these red ones https://amzn.to/37JUitK) and place them in the box. At the end of the month, we open the boxes and read each of the compliments that have been written. It is fun to see what the kids come up with and wonderful to see the excitement when they are read! 

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Valentine’s Boxes

Valentine’s Day is such a fun holiday to celebrate! It is all about love, warm fuzzies, giving, and letting people know they are special. My kids are still pretty little, but I still wanted to let them in on this fabulous holiday. We organized a get together with moms and kids from church and from various other play dates and planned to exchange valentines.

Here are the boxes that we made! By we, I kind of mean me. Actually half way through the project, my husband came home and asked who was having more fun, me or the kids. Does it really matter? 😉

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Gwenyth (18 months) is a huge fan of cats. She loves our cat, Toodles, and screams excitedly when she sees cats in books or anywhere else! We made her box by googleing a cat mask and cutting it out. If you are more confident in your drawing skills than I am, you could always make one of your own! We printed it out on cardstock so that it would have some structure to it. We made the tail by cutting out two of the same tail like shapes from white construction paper and gluing them together around a pipe cleaner. I was tempted to use the cardstock here as well, but it didn’t have as much strength as I was hoping when cut into that long, skinny shape. The legs are made out of toilet tissue rolls that are covered in white paper and the feet are just hearts cut from construction paper.  Pipe cleaners for the whiskers, googly eye stickers and a puff ball for the nose.  A little glitter glue, and our kitty was all ready to receive her valentines!

Max (3) has always loved basketball. Really any sport, but it is basketball season so we went with that. We covered the box in orange construction paper.  (I got the boxes at Target, but I am sure you could find an old shoe box that would work just as well!) We used a toilet tissue role for the base of the hoop, covering two sides in order to put is name on the box. The backboard is cardstock and the actual hoop is a pipe cleaner. Max wanted to add the ball and I thought that was a great idea! I drew basketball lines on the orange paper (after the kids went down for naps, I had a nagging feeling that Max’s box didn’t really look finished, so I actually extended the lines down the sides of the box as well.) Some glitter glue basketball words on the sides and it was a “slam dunk.” 😉