Valentine’s Day

Here are some fun crafts and activities to spice up your homeschool this Valentine’s Day. We do a few of these each year and spread them out over the week of Valentine’s Day in our homeschool.

Heart Attacks

I like kicking the week off by giving my kids heart attacks on their bedroom doors. I write little notes about the things I love most about them on heart cut-outs and stick them on the door in the night so they find them when they awaken in the morning.

Sometimes we like to spread even more of this love by choosing another person to heart attack – our grandparents, a neighbor, or a friend.

Here’s a printable we created that can accompany a surprise heart attack from your family.

The second one is the same, except it can be from a single person instead of multiple people.

Chocolate Box Cupcakes

I love a chance to bake with my kids. Besides practicing fractions and measurements, we also use baking activities to help them practice following directions carefully. I give the kids the recipe and they have to execute it on their own. They can ask questions, but I don’t jump in and help them, even if I see a mistake. Once they are readers, reading recipes makes great practice since it requires CAREFUL reading. We made Valentines’ Day cupcakes and then put them in a chocolate box for our dessert.

Heart Tic-Tac-Toe Spelling

Tic-Tac-Toe Spelling is one of our normal Word Work activities, but for Valentine’s Day, we put the little Tic-Tac-Toe boards in a heart and use actual Tic-Tacs for extra holiday fun. For each word a child spells correctly, he or she gets to add a Tic-Tac to the board, trying to get three in a row before a competitor does. Make sure you choose Tic-Tacs with more than one color so each kid can use one of the colors. We found some pink and white ones in each package. We keep playing until the kids have practiced all of their spelling words a few times.

Valentine’s Day Viscosity

You can learn about viscosity with a simple science experiment. Use clear plastic cups, a variety of liquids, and some heart gems. You can use marbles too, but since it’s Valentine’s Day we used hearts. Line the cups up, filling each one about two-thirds of the way full with its own liquid. Fun liquids to try are water, dish or liquid soap, glue, corn syrup, vegetable or mineral oil, honey, isopropyl alcohol, and hair gel.

Viscosity is a physics property that applies to fluids. It describes how fluids show resistance to flow because of their internal friction. Essentially, you could describe a fluid in terms of how thick or thin each one is. A more viscous liquid is thicker and resists flow more than a less viscous liquid.

Place a heart bead inside each cup of fluid you have prepared. Time each one to see how long it takes for the heart to flow through the fluid and reach the bottom of the cup. Try to line up the cups, placing them in order from least viscous to most viscous based on your tests.

HeART Project

This art project is super simple, but fun to put together. Your child just needs to cut out a number of identical hearts. You can trace a cookie-cutter, stencil, or just freehand draw and then cut out the paper hearts. Arrange the hearts in a circle and glue them together, creating a wreath. Attach a ribbon at the top for hanging. You can write notes on them and give the wreath as a gift or just hang it up as a decoration. While you are crafting, discuss several of the elements of art you used within your project; line, shape, and color particularly apply in this project.

Conversation Heart Stories

Give your kids a fun writing challenge. Place a pile (or box) or conversation hearts near each kid and challenge them to create a story that includes the phrases from each heart in the pile. Instead of writing each word or phrase, the child will glue a conversation heart in place when it enters into the story. By the end of the story, every heart’s message must be included.

Homemade Valentines

We always make our own homemade Valentines for each other each year. Each person makes a card for each member of our family and we deliver them to our dinner plates on Valentine’s Day. I love watching their creativity come out and reading the sweet notes they write to each other. We also make sure to make some for our grandparents and the kids get to write letters, address and stamp the envelopes, and send them off in the mail. Hooray for authentic writing experiences!

Valentine’s Mystery Dinner

This activity happen AFTER school gets out. For our Valentine’s Day dinner, I create a mystery menu. Each person finds a 3-course menu at their place-setting. The menu items are things like “Cupid’s Arrow,” “Warm Cuddles,” and “Romeo and Juliet.”  I make up new names and plan a new menu every year to keep them guessing!

They all mark three items for course one and then hand me their menus.  I learned long ago to make sure each menu has a name on it so I can keep track of each person’s order.  I prepare the food ahead of time and fill each plate according to each order.  Then we all sit and enjoy course one.

As in every good mystery dinner, you’d better be careful what you order.  You may get noodles, but no sauce; butter, but no roll; or your dessert first.  And watch out, because you don’t want your drink to arrive last!  When course one is over, we move on to course 2 and then course 3.  At the end, everyone tries to guess which item was which.

My family has gotten pretty good at guessing.  They almost always guess right by the end.

A Few Valentine’s Mystery Dinner Tips

• Begin by just planning a menu.  Don’t worry about the names.  Just think of a normal menu, like fettucini noodles, alfredo sauce, breadsticks, dipping sauce, and a salad.  That’s five items.  Now add five more – green beans, carrot sticks, parmesan cheese ( as a topping for the pasta), salad dressing, and apple slices.  The last two items to round out the twelve will be a drink and a dessert.
• Once you have your menu, just come up with some fun names for each item.  “Green with envy” was green beans.  “Sweethearts, Anne and Gilbert” came from one of our favorite book series – Anne of Green Gables.  In the story Gilbert insults Anne by calling her Carrots because of her red hair; later they fall in love.  So that menu item was heart-shaped carrot slices.
• Put all of your prepared food items in order alongside a key to the menu so you’ll be quick at filling plates.  That way you can get back to eating with your family.
• Make each course separate.  Everyone finishes their course before the next round of ordering happens.
• If you get dressing without salad, etc., we just let it sit on the plate until the salad gets ordered.  We don’t make people eat everything.
• I prepare as much as I can in little dishes so it’s easy for me to serve.  For example, the salad dressing would be served in those little restaurant cups, which I would’ve prepared ahead of time.  The more prep work I get done ahead of time, the more fun I have during the dinner because I’m not working through the whole thing.

Our Valentine’s Mystery Dinner has become a favorite tradition.  My family is pretty sure they have my menus all figured out after 6 or 7 years of doing this, so I might just have to switch things up and make them really hard this year.  I hope you try it and have fun with it. So much better than a long wait at a fancy restaurant and paying the babysitter!

More Valentine’s Fun and Learning

Check out our Homeschool Holidayopedia Pinterest Board for even more fun ideas to spice up your Valentine’s week in your homeschool!

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