Valentine’s Day Fun!!!!

Valentine’s Day….love it! Love showing my family how much I love them. I love to put my “heart” into decorating our home for holidays and I delight over the little smiles and giggles when the kids come down in the morning. This year…this is what they found:
We had a delicious breakfast of eggs, bacon, applesauce, diced peaches and juice. The kids were giddy over the hershey kisses centerpiece and happy to indulge in some chocolate before lunch.
We then worked on our lesson on St. Valentine and making mosaics. You can find the link to that here. Additionally, here are some shots of the kiddos working on their heart mosaics.
Kids + black glue= craziness but fun!
This valentine’s day instead of a fun, family party, Sweet pea and DDD were off to a special friend’s Valentine party. They were going to make some cute mailboxes and had asked all the kids to bring valentines to exchange. Each year I hit the walmart for some candy and some “character” valentines that they like. However, this year we found these adorable valentines through pinterest and they were such a hit. We attached snickers to Sweet Pea’s valentines and she was so excited to hand them out.(The depiction below is actually four small valentines that need to be clipped out)
The link below were Dirty Dog D’s valentines. Aren’t they awesome? He used Jolly Rancher lollipops for the light sabers and all his guy friends raved about these.
The “littles” worked on their personal valentines for close friends and family. To me, there is nothing cuter than some foam stickers, crayons, and construction paper. Note the “fashionista’s” card to her best buddy, complete with beautiful heart lips….haha.

Since the big kids were off to a party, the little girls and I decided to have a fancy tea party at the local tea shop. (I was worried about how this would go over with the 15 month old…but she did great!) We had to make sure that everyone remembered their manners; were dressed like a lady; and knew how to properly hold a fancy tea cup.
Lastly, we started our 100 acts of kindness for the month of February. We introduced the concept right after our celebration of the 100th day of school (blog coming soon) and a great introduction into the season of lent. The kids place a pink or red cut out heart on our poster for each act of kindness that they complete. I believe we have about 40-some paper hearts (not all are depicted below) indicating acts of love from the children thus far. I am so proud of them.

Some of these have included the following:
- making Daddy’s coffee before he comes down in the morning
- watching a sibling’s favorite show instead of their own
- helping a sibling clean up
- greeting a new friend
I hope you had a wonderful Valentine’s Day! Thanks for “checking in”!
I sure did love the “fashionista’s” card. I told her how my favorite thing was the lips. Caitlin carried it around for several days. BTW, how do you keep your kids from “forgetting” about the acts of kindness wall. I find, most of the things like this fizzle out. Tips?
I put it up in the breakfast room so it’s one of those things that I always mention in the morning. “hey…what are you doing for acts of kindness today?” I use it for correcting them too….”hey, this would be a great time to perform an act of kindness and let him/her have that toy now….” I think putting something accessible is the key. It’s hard, though. =)