While I can't believe it's been nearly 6 months since I've updated this blog, I don't have the time to fill in the blanks so I'll leave you guessing for awhile longer (hopefully not six more months) and just start with today.
Normally I'm not a fan of valentines day. I don't like all the hype about gifts and candy and flowers and romance. Don't get me wrong, I like all that stuff. I just don't think it should be reserved for once a year. This year has been different, though. We're still skipping the gifts, candy, flowers and romance (this for the sake of the eight-year-old who exclaims "GROSS!" at the mere mention of kissing), but we are doing a few extra things to recognize this day dedicated to love.
The boys both had valentines parties at school so I spent some time "researching" (read: a GREAT excuse to use pinterest!) easy homemade valentines. We opted for simple and cheap and modeled our valentines after these. Ours weren't nearly as pink or witty, but they did point to One who is love {1 John 4:8}, the reason we have the ability to love {1 John 4:19} and the One who loves us more than any other person possibly could {John 15:13}.
I had visions of grandeur when I started the week and thought the girls and I would do a valentines themed craft each day. It only happened Monday and Friday. But we did two! It's more than zero. On Monday we made this heart chain. It gave us a chance to talk about math - we practiced measuring and talked about patterns. Yeah for everyday teaching opportunities!
Today we got out the paints. My girls love love love to paint.
We don't do it nearly as often as they want, but today seemed like a good day (and I had no other crafty plans) so I drew some hearts with white crayon on some papers and let them discover the secret design as they painted.
Needless to say, Elise's work showed a little more purpose than Evie's. Evie just likes to transfer water from the cup to the paints.
But she sure looks cute doing it! {I have no idea what motivated the hat. She came downstairs with it on and insisted on wearing it while she painted}
I couldn't let the girls have all the fun...
After we cleaned up our paints it was time to show a little love through food (a popular way to express love in our family) so we melted some chocolate and dipped strawberries.
And then, as quickly as we could before the chocolate hardened, we grabbed anything we could get our hands on that we could dip in the rest of the chocolate. I found some marshmallows (kids like those right?)...
...and graham crackers (Ree Drummond style - thank you Amazon Prime for access to The Pioneer Woman).
And then, just for fun, I melted some white chocolate and dedicated a marshmallow to each of the kids.
Valentines activities are hit-or-miss at our house, but not love. Love for the Lord and love for each other are never in short supply.
No comments:
Post a Comment