Love is in the air and that can only mean one thing. It’s time for Valentine’s Day!
I have a confession to make. Of all the holidays, Valentine’s Day is my least favorite to celebrate. I never really enjoyed the Valentine card exchange at school and have always thought it was a silly holiday.
However, I vowed to myself to celebrate all the little things with my kiddos and that includes Valentine’s Day.
When my 5-year-old was in preschool, we went to the store and picked out Valentine cards with her favorite characters on them. We also made little goodie bags to go along with them that included bubbles, stickers, cute pencils and stamps. I liked doing that versus getting the kids candy because they were so young.
This year, I wanted to be a little more intentional with the Valentines my daughter gave out to her kindergarten class. I wanted to spend time with her and actually make them with her instead of just going to the store and buying some. I really wanted to get to spend that quality time with her and I also wanted to teach her that making things from your heart is just as good, if not better, than buying things from the store.
So, I went to Pinterest and looked up the easiest homemade Valentine ideas I could find, because I was not trying to complicate things by making something super intricate or detailed. I found the basic idea of cutting construction paper into heart shapes (about the size of your hand) and then writing your Valentine’s message there.
I liked the idea, but wanted to let Piper have a little more fun with it other than just helping me cut out the heart shapes. So, after I had the heart shapes cut out in red and pink construction paper, I cut a smaller heart in just plain white printer paper. I glued the smaller heart onto the bigger construction paper heart and then let Piper color or draw a picture on the small white heart. This personalized each Valentine and let Piper have more involvement in helping make them.
After they were all put together, I had my daughter write each kid’s name on the Valentine, giving her practice writing and spelling.
In total, this probably took two hours, but it was totally worth it! I got to spend quality time with my kid and she can be super proud to take her homemade Valentines to school to give to each of her classmates and teachers.
That’s a parenting win in my book!
ANN BURNS is a Morgantown native, raising two young children with her husband, Drake. She writes weekly columns for The Dominion Post. Contact her at Columns@DominionPost.com.
