Valentine’s day is so much more than a romantic holiday. It’s the perfect time to teach your children about showing love and concern for others. Today I want to share some family Valentine’s day ideas that will help you and your children get the most love out of this holiday together!
When our kids were young we wanted to encourage them to show love, and be an encouragement to others. One of the things we did was bake cupcakes together, and then on Valentine’s Day we went to visit folks and shared the goodies with them to let them know that we loved them. Usually, these were people from our church, like our Pastor, and some of the Sunday School teachers who had encouraged our children. We also would visit a few of the widows from the church. The kids loved doing this, and the people we visited were blessed by it.
As the kids got just a little bit older, we wanted to encourage them to show love to their immediate family, so we started a new tradition. We began to have a family Valentine’s party, and all the kids would make a card for their siblings, as well as for Mom and Dad. My husband and I would also take time to make cards for each of the kids. We began making these as part of their school day, the week of Valentine’s Day.
We gave the kids paper, stickers, and these supplies to work with:
And the final product:
What made this fun is the poems we would write for each other! Most of them began with “Roses are red”. Where the poem went from there was always interesting! When the kids were young, I got poems like this:
Roses are red, violets are blue,
You’re the best mom, and I love you!
One of my favorite ones from when my son was younger: (note the spelling!) 🙂
Roses are red, violets are blue
Thanks for helping me fix my atatood!
My husband and I would usually come up with poems for each child relating to a joke we had with them about something, or just teasing about something that made us all laugh. As the kids got a little older, they began to be creative and add some humor also. For example, here is just one of the funny ones I got from one of the kids:
Roses are red, “Oh where’d I put that key?”
My poor, dear mother suffers from an acute loss of memory!
This one is a bit gross, but came with the apology that nothing else rhymed:
Roses are red, zits have pus
You have the patience of Job to live with us!
And this more serious one was written for my husband from one of my daughters:
Roses are red, at Aldi you need a cart –
I just wanted to remind you that you hold the key to my heart!
I can’t begin to tell you how much fun we had with this over the years, or how much we all looked forward to the day of our family Valentine’s party! As you can see, there was fun involved, but also some serious expressions of love that took thought and time. It was a great way for each member of our family to think of how they could show their love to others in the family. It took time to come up with thoughts and poems for these cards, but it was worth the closeness it brought, as we all shared our creations!
May I just encourage you to do something to make your kids feel extra special and loved on Valentine’s Day? Use it as an opportunity to affirm them, and remind them of how special they are, while also encouraging them to do that for the others in the family. It will be a tradition they will come to love, and one they will always remember!
4 Responses
Isn’t it fun, and it’s great that your oldest son wanted to come home to celebrate with you!!
We have a similar tradition. With 5 kids, we decided to make valentine’s day a family celebration. We all make cards (using stickers and rubber stamps) for each other, and have cheese fondue for dinner and chocolate fondue for dessert. My oldest son is in college now, and he is coming home to celebrate with us. He didn’t want to miss out on the fun. I like the idea of silly poems. That would be fun to add to our cards.
Michelle, hiding the bags is a really good idea to add a little extra excitement! 🙂
We tried a tradition like that this year and it was a lot of fun. I hid the bags to add a little extra fun.