Start simple. Decorate the main rooms of your home. Give each kid a ball of ribbon in red, white, or pink and watch what they do. Ribbon can be wrapped around vases of flowers and draped above doorways. A pair of scissors can be run the length of the ribbon to create curls.
Cabinets and dressers can be made festive with small construction paper hearts. The kids can stick them all over – wherever they can find a good spot. If you sit still long enough, there may be a few attached to you. Bigger hearts can be cut out and displayed on the walls. If you are afraid that tape will strip the paint off of the walls, use a hole punch to create holes in the hearts. Make a loop through the hole with a piece of string and hang over a push pin or a small nail.
Instead of streamers, try a paper chain in alternating colors. Cut several pieces of construction paper into one inch wide strips. Interlock the paper and create a link chain. When the chain is long enough hang it up in the kitchen or family room as a banner to remind the entire family that it is Valentine’s Day.
Kids can glue Popsicle Sticks together to make coasters for the coffee table. Watercolor paints can be used to decorate the finished coaster with hearts and arrows. You can even add words like, Happy Valentine’s Day, Love, etc. to the coasters. The same Popsicle sticks can be used to make a poster or a mobile that says I Love You. The sticks are shaped and then painted bright red or pink. Once dry, mount them on poster board or attached to a heart-shaped hanger by pieces of yarn.
A cloth furniture cover can transform your living room into a Valentine’s Day celebration room. Measure the length of the couch or chair so that the cover will fit. Spread it out on the floor and let the kids get started on the decorations. They can glue felt words and shapes to the cover along with the names of each family member. Every year at Valentine’s Day you can bring out their handiwork and decorate the room.
Decorations are fun to make and display around the house. They don’t have to be for just one season. Store them in airtight containers so they stay clean and intact for next year and years to come.
Here are a few decorating ideas. Click on the pictures to order.
Love Crazy Valentine’s Day Decorating Kit 10pc
Kids like to get the sweet stuff more than the other stuff.
Valentine’s Day is a great day to allow your kids to share in being creative with baking… so here are some Valentine Cookie and Cupcake ideas that ooze with love and fresh baked goodness.
photo credit: therouxdown
Let’s start with the cookies.
For kids, baking is fun. It is a way for them to help out in the kitchen and learn love cooking. The freezer section of the grocery store has several flavors of cookies. Rolled dough is good to use and eliminates cleanup hassles after the cookies are made.
Take a roll of refrigerated dough and roll it out on a non-stick surface. Add a touch of flour to the rolling pin before you try to roll the dough or it will stick. Younger kids may find it easier to roll the dough out with a plastic rolling pin because they are not as heavy as the wooden ones.
Heart Shaped Cookie Cutters will turn regular sugar, peanut butter, and chocolate chip cookies into creations of love. Kids don’t only like hearts.
Let them experiment with other shapes in the cookie cutter arsenal if they want to. They can even design shapes of their own with the dough pieces that are too small to cut.
Cute Valentine Cupcake Ideas
Cupcakes are much the same way but it takes a bit more preparation.
To make it easy, use a box cake mix instead of mixing everything from scratch. Remind your kids that if you are adding egg that they can’t dip a finger in because of the possibility of salmonella poisoning.
The kids can choose to use cupcake cups that are decorated for the holiday or spoon them directly into the muffin pan. Mini muffin pans create bite size cupcakes for the family to enjoy after dinner. If you have a window in the oven, kids will camp out and watch the cupcakes bake just like a television show.
photo credit: dyanna
Decorate those cupcakes with creamy icing. White icing can be turned into pink with a bit of red food coloring. Kids will be amazed by this as the white icing changes colors. For an extra special touch, add candy sprinkles or cinnamon red hot candies. It will be hard to keep the kids from eating up all the ingredients as they bake. It may be hard to keep you from sneaking that spoonful of icing when you should be adding it to the cupcakes too so be warned.
Sweets are fun to make and even more fun to eat. Cookies and cupcakes get a nice makeover on Valentine’s Day to help reflect the good feelings of the holiday as well as create great family togetherness.
Here are a couple great resources for cooking with the kids.
photo credit: riptheskull
Traditions are special things that we do from year to year that are unique to our individual families. Traditions that we learn in our childhood can be passed down to our children when we become adults. Do you have a special Valentine’s Day tradition? If not, then this year is the perfect year to start!
Take a family portrait. Remember each Valentine’s Day with a picture to commemorate the moment. Choose to wear clothes that reflect the day. Everyone’s outfit can include red, white, and pink in some fashion. Each year you will see how the family grows and changes from the year before. Also each year, family members can take turns finding the perfect picture frame to hold the photo.
What about a story? Valentine’s Day is named after St. Valentine. No one knows for sure if he was real or a work of fiction, but it is fun to tell the variations of the story to lend meaning to the day. Whether real or imagined, St. Valentine championed the cause of love. The story of Cupid comes from Roman mythology as he was the son of Aphrodite who was the goddess of love.
Give your kids something that is real – the story of your love. Parents can retell the story of how they met and fell in love. There is nothing more intriguing than a story of true love. Other family members can share their stories of love as well. This is a way of passing stories down through the generations – an ancient practice that started before there were written records.
Watch a touching movie. The movies don’t have to be sappy chick flicks. Once the kids become teenagers, especially the boys, they will want out of this tradition, especially if the movies are too mushy. The movie can have aspects of love whether it is friendship, family bonds, or the boy-girl kind of love. Stories of love give kids a strong sense of its meaning so that they are prepared to show and receive love from others as they grow up.
Play a game that tells what each person in the family loves about each of the other family members? Each person will get a chance to write down on a piece of paper what they love about one another. Anonymously, every family member writes their thoughts on a separate slip for mom, dad, brother, sister, and so on.
The papers are put in a basket or a small box that is owned by each person. Family members take turns reading aloud what has been written about them. It’ll feel good to know that you are loved and respected by your family.
Valentine’s Day traditions help us teach our kids about love. We grow closer as a family and learn to depend on each other no matter what when we create Valentine’s Day traditions such as the ones mentioned here.
photo credit: vieux bandit
