Valentine's Day Fun Ideas for Kids

While Valentine’s Day is often seen as a day to celebrate romantic love, it’s a special day that should celebrate all types of love, including love between siblings, between children and their parents and kids and their friends. In fact, you may even want to tell kids the story of St. Valentine to help them understand this holiday. I wanted to give you some last minute Valentine's Day fun ideas for kids.

Decorating for a Day of Fun

Valentine’s Day garland is easy to make. Cut out heart shapes from colored construction paper, choosing colors that go along with the party. Punch holes on each side of the hearts and use string or twine to attach all the hearts together. Once you have the garland made, you can hang it above the doorways, from tables or drape it from the ceiling and light fixtures.

Are you having some friends or just want to do it up for the family? To decorate your table, add some candlesticks with pretty candles, or for fire safety use votive candles in small clear jars or cups. You can go with beautiful Valentine’s Day themed tablecloths, plates, napkins and cups as well. Look for heart shaped plates and serving dishes to add to the mood. Get the kids involved, and let it be a hands on fun project to decorate your table for the special day.

Exciting Games to Enjoy

Conversation Heart Towers – You’ll need several bags of conversation hearts for this game. Give children a handful of hearts to use. Give them 45 seconds to a minute to build a tower with their hearts as high as they can. See who can build the highest tower within that amount of time. The tower has to stay standing up too.

Conversation Heart Relay Races – This is a fun game for a group at Sunday school, homeschool co-ops and classrooms. Divide the kids up into two teams. Give each team a bowl of conversation hearts. About 15 feet away, place another bowl for each team. Each team also gets a pair of chopsticks. The first person on the team uses a pair of chopsticks to pick up a conversation heart and then take it to the other bowl without dropping it. See which team can get the most hearts in their bowl within five minutes.

Throw My Heart Game – Here is another good game for a group. You’ll need three red balls with black hearts drawn on them with a permanent marker. It’s best to have at least 6-8 kids to play this game. Start by having all the kids stand in a circle. Start with one red ball, giving the ball to one player. Have that person call out the name of another player, tossing them the ball gently. That person catches the ball and then calls out another person’s name, throwing the ball to them. Continue the game for a couple minutes and then challenge kids to throw it without dropping the ball. After about five minutes, add a second ball and have them keep both balls going. Add in the third ball to see how long they can go without dropping any of the balls. This is a great game to get kids moving!

Valentine’s day Pictionary – This game is a variation of the fun game, Pictionary. This is fun to do with the whole family or a group of friends. Make some game cards that include Valentine’s Day themed ideas like broken hearts, a box of candy or Cupid’s arrow. Have fun having kids draw what is on their card, trying to see if their teammates can guess what they have drawn.

Valentine’s Day Crafts

It’s also nice to have some fun crafts for kids to enjoy on Valentine's Day or at a party. This is especially helpful if the weather is too bad for kids to go outside. Here are a few crafts kids will enjoy.

Stained Glass Valentine Card – This is a beautiful craft that kids of all ages can enjoy, although you’ll need an adult to do the ironing. You’ll need some crayons, a couple handheld pencil sharpeners, scissors, a permanent marker, ironing board with iron, waxed paper and some large paper grocery bags.

Start by having kids peel off the crayon papers. Then, kids can use pencil sharpeners to shave the crayons, placing the shavings on a piece of waxed paper. Place a paper bag on the ironing board, then put the wax paper with crayon shavings on top of the paper bag. Cover the shavings using another piece of waxed paper and another paper bag. Use a medium setting on the iron and press the bag until the crayon shavings melt.

After the paper cools, allow kids to cut out hearts from the wax paper, placing greetings right on the “stained glass” heart or adding them to cards.

Friendship Flowers - This craft is really fun and easy for younger kids. You’ll need scissors, tape, lollipops and cardstock or scrapbooking paper.

Start by cutting out three petals shaped like hearts, two flower centers shaped like circles and two leaves from the card stock or scrapbooking paper. Poke little holes in each piece, sliding the lollipop stick through the hole and securing the flower together. Tape the bottom to make sure the lollipop doesn’t slide out. Add a fun message to the flower. Kids can give the flowers to friends or to their parents.

Valentine's Day Food and Drinks

Small party sandwiches make a great idea for Valentine's Day at home or if you have a party. Make them special by cutting them into heart shapes with a cookie cutter. Cheese quesadillas can easily be cut into heart shapes as well. Use your imagination with some fun finger foods that will work for this special day of love.

For some sweets, consider making heart shaped cookies decorated with icing and sprinkles. Cupcakes are a fun treat that you can serve as well. Decorate with pink icing and add a piece of heart shaped candy in the middle.

Have fun with the drinks. Cranberry juice punch is a perfect choice for the Valentine’s Day party. Pink lemonade with a strawberry puree mixed in is easy and festive. Any red or pink drink will be fun on Valentine's Day! I hope you enjoy these fun Valentine's Day ideas for kids!

Blessings,

Denise from Little House on the Valley