14 Days of Showing Love: Valentine's Day Countdown

This year for Valentine's Day I thought it'd be fun to have a little activity each day to show love for someone.  So I came up with 14 ways that my preschool-aged children could do that.  One thing that I is great about this idea is you can take it and mold it to fit your own situation in life.  You can use my 14 ideas or come up with some entirely new ones.  You can choose to follow the way I am presenting my ideas or come up with a different way.  Hey, you could even have it been something for you and your spouse if you wanted. 

I am going to show you what I did to make our countdown.

I came up with 14 ways of showing love.  I tried to have a good variety in there.  Here they are:

1. Bake cookies and give away

2. Make a valentine for someone

3. Give someone a hug

4.  Tell someone you love them

5. Read a book about love

6. As a family take turns saying reasons why we love each member of our family

7. Put a puzzle together with someone you love

8. Send a valentine in the mail to someone you love

9.  Sing a song with/or to someone

10. Give someone a kiss

11. Do an act of service for someone

12. Watch "Be My Valentine Charlie Brown" with someone you love

13. Give a compliment to someone

14. Play a game with someone you love

After I came up with the ideas I wanted to use I found an assortment of patterned paper to use as pockets.  Since I don't have any daughters I tried to find paper that wasn't too girly.  I then cut the paper 3 inches long, 4 inches wide.

 I got some poster board and cut out a large heart.  (I don't have the greatest heart drawing skills...)

 Then I took the paper that I'd cut and folded half inch in on each side and an inch up on the bottom and glued the bottom to the sides to form a pocket.

Then I glued the pockets onto the heart-shaped poster board and numbered them.

 Next I took advantage of my husband's origami skills (yes, I am constantly doing that) and had him fold me 14 hearts.  You can learn more about this heart here.  He used 5 inch squared paper.  I am hoping he is able to give some instructions on how to do this fold on his blog in the near future. I will let you know if that happens.  If not, there you could just use heart shaped card stock or whatever you want.

Then I typed up my fourteen activities, printed them off, and cut them out.

 Then I glued the idea onto my heart.  This is what the heart looks like when you unfold it.

 Here is what my completed project looks like:

 I wanted the top of the hearts to be poking out so that they were easier to get out plus I think it adds to the overall look.  I think that my boys will enjoy opening the hearts up each day to find out what is written on each heart.  This was a lot of fun to make so I hope it will be a lot of fun for my  boys to do!

If you would like to see our Valentine Countdown Puzzle from last year click here.

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