Valentine’s Day is almost here! Are you doing any fun and easy Valentine activities with your kids to celebrate? What fun things are you adding to your school day for Valentine’s Day? Is your schedule full of Pinterest-worthy ideas? You have it all organized, all your supplies are in place, and you have everything ready to go. Or is your brain fried, and you can’t come up with any brilliant ideas at all? You don’t think you have anything special you can use, and you have no energy left to even think about it.
If that’s the case, let me try and rescue your Valentine’s Day with some easy, inexpensive ideas. And who knows, they may not even require too much extra energy!
Valentine’s Day Pancakes
Make your regular pancake recipe and add cut-up strawberries or raspberries and chocolate chips. Because nothing says Valentine’s Day better than chocolate! In all honesty, I have kids who won’t eat pancakes without chocolate chips in them.
Heart-Shaped English Muffin Pizzas
Preheat your oven to 400 degrees. Slice your English muffins in half. Then, get creative and trim the sides and the top until your English muffins look like hearts. Some people drizzle each slice with a bit of olive oil and toast them in the oven for a few minutes. Others skip that step – your choice. Spread your favorite pizza sauce on top of each muffin slice. Then top with your favorite cheese and pizza toppings. Or, if you are brave and adventurous, let your kids add their preferred toppings. Bake your English muffins on a cookie sheet for about 8 to 10 minutes, or until the cheese is melty and gooey and they look done. If you are smart, you will line your cookie sheets with parchment paper and save yourself the trouble of cleaning melted cheese off those cookie sheets.
Chocolate Covered Anything
Melt baking chocolate or chocolate chips (with some added butter or coconut oil) until liquid. If you do this in the microwave, be sure to stir every 20 seconds or so! Then, dip away! What can you dip in chocolate? Anything you like! Common dipping suggestions include strawberries, pretzels, cookies, bananas, and cake cubes. Hey, you can even add sprinkles to your dipped creations. Or use melted pink chocolate wafers.
Heart-Shaped Cookies
Use your favorite sugar cookie recipe and use heart-shaped cookie cutters. Decorate with red or pink sugar. Or frost your cooled cookies with red or pink frosting. Add sprinkles! Why not?! I am sure your neighbors and friends will all appreciate getting some Valentine’s Day cookies.
Heart Garlands
Time to get crafty. Trace and cut out multiple heart shapes from different colored papers. Then, poke two small holes near the top of each heart shape. Run some pretty ribbon or yarn through the holes to make a garland. Your kids could hang them above some windows, above a door, above their beds, even over a fireplace.
Valentine’s Day Cards
Get out those craft supplies, various papers, scissors, glue, and (for the very brave) some glitter or glitter paint or glitter glue. Let your kids make Valentine’s Day cards for each other, for their friends or neighbors, or for whomever they choose. Yes, it will get messy, but you can count it as art.
John 3:16 Valentine Acrostic
Have you seen these before? Your kids might enjoy these acrostics. You can have them arrange them, have them fill in the blanks for missing letters, or print out copies for them to see and learn from.
What I Love About You Notes
Have your kids write “What I Love About You” notes to each other. Encourage your children to think of positive things about their siblings. Then they can write each other letters highlighting those positive traits.
Valentine’s Day Word Search
Write a list of all the words you can think of that relate to Valentine’s Day. Some suggestions of words could include Valentine, love, family, chocolate, kindness, heart, pink, red, brother, sister, grandmother, grandfather, letters, cards – I’m sure you can think of several more. Then, take your list of words and turn your list into a word search. There are many free online word search makers – here is a link to just one of them – https://thewordsearch.com/maker/. (No, I don’t get any commissions from them!)
Your Own Love Story
You could approach this item in a couple of different ways. First of all, you could pull out your wedding pictures or pictures from when you were dating and tell your kids your own love story. Let them comment and ask questions. Talk about what attracted you to your spouse. Explain to them how long you dated and some of the different things you did while dating. Hey, they need to learn about love and relationships; tell them about yours.
Another way you could approach this is to turn it into a bit of a game. Write out your love story in short sentences, one line at a time. Then, cut those sentences into individual strips of paper. Give a set of sentences to each child and have them try to put your story in the proper order. Depending on your children’s ages, you could have them work together on this project. When they think they have your story in the correct order, they can glue the strips, in order, onto a larger sheet of paper. Hmm, this could be interesting!
These are just a few ideas you can work into your school day. Or maybe these suggestions will inspire you to come up with your own, even better, ideas!
Whatever you do to celebrate, I would love to see some pictures!
