Article by Trudy Allen | 7-8 min read
Photo by Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels
Valentine’s Day has morphed over the years to encompass varying types of relationship, including non-romantic relationships.
It’s a great day for giving examples to your children of how to show love and appreciation to those they hold dear.
Make Valentine Cards or Letters together: One for each family member and then ask everyone to write things they love, admire or appreciate about each of their siblings, and their parents in each card. Get some red coloring pens, heart stickers etc for decoration.
Enjoy a LOVEly Breakfast together: decorate the breakfast table the night before with red paper napkins and heart motifs. Most Dollar shops stock heart decorations making it inexpensive, even Target’s dollar section offers some great finds.
Try to stay with a red theme for breakfast foods, this can include using food dye to color heart shaped pancakes or boiled eggs, strawberries or other red berries. You can hand out your Valentine’s Day cards at the table or pop them inside little gift bags along with one or two inexpensive presents, wrapped in red tissue paper.
An Annual Family Photo Book: this requires some preparation ahead of Valentine’s Day and regularly. Start collecting and filing photos from family outings, holidays, events and achievements each year. Then either send the images off to a company offering professional Photo Books, or buy an old fashioned photo album and place the photos in there with comments and stickers, listing the date and events. Open and view this together over breakfast and relive family memories.
Make Heart Shaped Cookies: Yes, it’ll probably get messy but accept that is going to happen and is part of the fun. Buy some red sprinkles or decorations and give them free reign to decorate them how they want. They may not be Insta-worthy cookies but they will show self-expression.
Photo by freestocks.org from Pexels
Heart Hunt: Hide paper hearts or Hershey Kisses around the house and the garden, if it’s warm enough outside. Then give each child a basket or bowl to collect all the hearts they can find. It may be best to set a time limit on this game. Once the time is up, count the number of hearts to see who got the most. The winner gets a little prize.
Watch a Family Movie: Stay at home, bring out the blankets and snuggle down together with hot chocolate and those heart-shaped cookies, whilst watching a family movie together. Princess Bride is perfect; a film about true love whether between Wesley and Buttercup, or a Grandfather and his Grandson. It also manages to include elements which delight and amuse adults, whilst being extensively a children’s film.
City Tour – do an internet search for “new events”, “free events”, “City Walks” anything you can think of and see what comes up. You might be surprised to find out what’s going on in your city or town, which is marketed to visitors and less widely known by those who live there.
If you met your significant other in the Town or City where you live, you could include a tour of all the places that hold a special memory for you when you were dating and share your story with your children.
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