Valentines Day Party

Little Guy's home-made Valentine cards.

This week has been a whirlwind of Valentine Day preparations.  I had volunteered to help with the party Little Guy’s pre-school was having, and had been tasked with making ‘boxes’ the children could decorate.  I also decided this year to make Little Guy’s valentines for his friends (to save money, but also for a little variety).  We used the store-bought ones left over from last year for Baby Boy’s little daycare friends.

What spare time I had over the weekend was spent making the little cards, getting the boxes ready and planning a little something for my own Valentine as well.

Little Guy’s cards were pretty straight forward.  I scoured the internet and came away with a lot of wonderful ideas.  In the end, Little Guy decided he wanted dinosaur cards.  I found some cute illustrations of cartoon-ish dinosaurs on-line and used them as inspiration for some I drew on plain white paper.  I then added a corny little line, “You are DINO-mite, Valentine!” and “Valentine, you are Tricera-TOPS!” etc to each.  I cut around the drawing, glued it to pink or red construction paper and then cut that paper to make a frame around the dinosaur.  Little Guy then colored each one, and we attached them to little plastic dinosaurs which we’d purchased at Wal Mart for $1 each.  The end result was pretty adorable and we had a lot of fun putting them together.

For the ‘boxes’, I decided to do something a little different.  We’ve saved a lot of formula canisters over the last few years (with no particular plan in mind), and finally put them to use.  I removed the label from each, cleaned them carefully, covered the edge with duct tape (to avoid any sharp bits), covered the outside with white art paper, trimmed in ribbon, and made holes in each side where a pipe-cleaner handle could go.  These were a little time consuming, but the end result was one I was happy with – and completely free, as I had all supplies on hand.

Old formula cans from our storage room.

Monday was the pre-school party, and we had so much fun!  I was able to be a ‘guest reader’ and shared two little Valentine themed books with the children.  Then we had a snack (heart shaped fruit pizza and juice).  I watched as the teacher taught all the little ones about the letter “R” during lesson time, and then watched as they sang songs and played some games.  I adored watching Little Guy as he interacted with his friends.  He was so well behaved and very involved in everything.  He loves learning and is soaking it all up like a little sponge.

Soon it was time for arts and crafts.  This was when I was able to bring out the Valentine buckets and the children were encouraged to decorate them.  We had crayons and stickers as well as various pictures and glue.  I had drawn about thirty little Valentine robots and those were a big hit for gluing to the sides.  They were also able to color and draw and write their names.  In the end, each child had a pretty cute Valentine bucket to take home – each decorated uniquely and adorably. 

This was the sample that I made for LG's Teacher.



And Little Guy's finished bucket (you can see one of the robot drawings here as well)

When it was time for me to leave after lunch, I ended up taking Little Guy home too.  I had the whole day off after all, and the roads were icky so this saved me a trip back to pick him up.  Also, he was clearly enjoying having me there, and was quite upset at the prospect of seeing me go.  We ended up having a lovely Mommy/Son afternoon at home, decorating our house with pink paper hearts and making a special Valentine dinner for Hubby.

It was a fabulous day, and the end result was worth every minute of time spent to get there.  Spending some quality time with my Little Guy always warms my heart, and this particular day with him was perfectly priceless!