Friday, January 27, 2012

Valentine's Day Party Ideas for Families

By Link Ferrari


It is important for families to show their love for each other, so what better time than Valentine's Day to play some game, participate in some fun recreation, all made to display one another love and support?

One fun activity is all about giving one another "snaps" for being who they are. Throughout the entire year, mom and dad, and the kids too, may add "snaps" to a special jar or containers. These "snaps" may include things such as "dad helped me build my pinewood derby car" or "Joey read books to his sister each night without complaint". Read these small slips of good things, thank one another for caring and empty the jar to start it again for another year.

During dinner on Valentine's night, make each member of the family tell other people why they love them. What about dad made mom love him? Why does Joey love his sister? How about sissy is special to dad? It may seem a small corny at the start, but in the end, everyone will enjoy listening to wonderful, positive things about themselves.

One fun family game involves family trivia. This game is particularly fun if the children are a bit older and there are at least 2 children in the family. Mom (or dad) creates a trivia game that looks something like this: there will be a series of index cards with a bit of family trivia on each card. Someone draws a card and tries to answer the question correctly. If correct, they get a point. The person with the most points at the end of the game gets a prize or extra chocolate syrup on their dessert. Some questions might be things like this:

- Which one of us suffered a broken leg at the age of 8?
- Which of us, at the age of 3, flushed an entire box of Tide down the toilet?
- Which of us snuck into mom and dad's room every night until he or she was 6 years old?

At a certain age, children begin to enjoy preparing meals for father and mother. For an exciting Valentine's activity, the children could be asked to prepare a meal for father and mother. Preferably, this may be breakfast in bed and could comprise of foods that are traditional "romantic" foods (like strawberries and chocolate) or whatever the kids intend to make. They might even choose to prepare a special Valentine's Day menu and let the parents choose off the menu. This would be a fun tradition to start as an annual event on Valentine's Day.

Consider a fun family game of "hidden hearts". In this game, children are provided hints to look for chocolate hearts hidden around the house. The hints could be simple or more complicated to figure out depending on the ages of the children. If one or more kids are very young, mother and father can help them with the clues. When they find the hearts, they can eat them, but mom or dad, remember in places you hid the hearts and be sure to count how many are found, so there are not any left to get ugly in the house!

Finally, a fun family activity around Valentine's Day is to make cards for other people. Have the kids make handprint cards for the grandparents or have the kids make cards for their friends. Handmade cards can be so much more meaningful than the store-bought kind and kids learn a lot from the experience of putting their hearts (literally) into making the card for others.




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