Valentines day with family

Valentine's Day Traditions and Activities

Family Valentine Box
Grab an old shoe box from the closet and decorate it with tissue paper, stickers, and cut out hearts. Using markers or paints add your family name to the outside. Set the box in a central place, two weeks prior to Valentine's Day and let family members drop each other valentine messages. Another twist is to draw names and secretly leave messages for that one person, trying to guess who has who at the end.

Valentine's Day Breakfast
Celebrate Valentine's Day as a family by making heart shaped waffles, French toast, or pancakes using either a heart shaped waffle iron, cookie cutters, or pancake molds.  If breakfast doesn't work for your family, try doing the same thing with sandwiches at lunch. Also remember, if Valentine's Day falls on a day that isn't good for your family (i.e a work or school day), then choose a day closest to Valentine's Day and celebrate then. If you are inclined, you can have simple inexpensive gifts sitting at each persons plate or better yet, place them in a large white valentine box in the center of the table with strings or ribbons attached. Have a string lead to everyone's plate and after breakfast or lunch is over let each family member pull out their gift. Remember try and keep the gifts simple and inexpensive, so that you don't get stressed out over trying to find time to buy and wrap the gifts. The dollar store is often a good place to find simple inexpensive gifts.

Make Heart Shaped Sugar Cookies
Valentine's Day is a great excuse to spend time making cookies together as a family. Sugar cookies are great tasting and easy to make for little ones. To avoid arguments while making the cookies, try measuring out the ingredients ahead of time and letting the kids take turns pouring the ingredients into the mixing bowl. Let the kids roll the dough out and use heart shaped cookie cutters to make the cookies.

Crazy Maze
Take the kids on a trip throughout the house by leaving a trail of hearts from their bedrooms to a special surprise waiting at the end. Curve the trail in and out of rooms, around chairs, and under tables to make the most out of the adventure. If you have more than one child, be sure to use different colored hearts, so that there isn't any confusion.

Celebrate the Old Fashioned Way
Make old fashioned valentines and secretly exchange them with each other. To make old fashioned valentines all you need is red and pink construction paper, white paper doilies, scissors, glue, and a marker. Cut out a large heart from the red or pink construction paper and then a smaller heart from the doily. Glue the white doily heart to the red or pink heart and write a secret love message.  To make it extra fun, hide them for your secret valentine to find.

Spread Valentine's Day Cheer
Make valentines and treats for seriously ill children at your local hospital or for a local homeless shelter in your area. Deliver the valentines as a family.

Magical Messages
Leave secret love messages around the house for each other. Write or leave messages on mirrors, in notebooks, on car doors (dirty cars make a great place to write!), in the refrigerator, or anywhere else they are sure to be seen.

Valentine Day Treasure Hunt
Using heart shaped containers, take your kids on a treasure hunt throughout the house with the final reward being a special Valentine’s Day treat.  If your kids are too small for a treasure hunt, try just filling the hearts with small prizes or candy and hiding them throughout the house.

Send a Secret Message
Send your kids a secret message with this magical message trick:
Using the juice from a fresh lemon and a small fine tip paint brush, write a secret message of love on plain white paper to your child. Once completely dried, fold the letter and seal it in an envelope for your Valentine telling them to “bake” their letter at 325 degrees for 3-5 minutes to read the message! Be sure to watch the paper the entire time and use a pot holder or metal tongs to handle
How does this work? The heat of the oven burns the lemon juice making it reappear on the paper.