Valentine's Day fun

It's a little late for some of these suggestions, but you can always file them away for next year if you like.

• Create a Valentine's Tree. A friend of mine purchased a white Christmas tree during the after-holiday clearance time. She decorated it with white lights, heart ornaments, and heart tinsel. (see photo above) The kids could hang any Valentines cards they received.
  
• Create a "Countdown to Valentines" calendar with a special Valentine themed activity for each day.
• Make a giant (non) Hershey's kiss. Melt a bag of chocolate chips. Use the kind of chocolate you like to eat: milk, semi-sweet, or dark. Set a greased funnel (small end down) on a sheet of parchment paper or a cookie sheet - somewhere from which it can easily be removed after the candy has cooled. Pour the melted chocolate into the funnel and let cool. Create your own variations by adding a spoonful of peanut butter as you are filling the funnel (makes a peanut butter kiss), adding nuts, or melting Andes mints along with the chocolate for a mint kiss. Let your imagination soar.
• Help your child create one-of-a-kind handmade old-fashioned Valentines (directions later in post if needed), or let them create a lovely yet simple 3D heart Paper craft.
  
• Make a special gift for someone in need of some TLC. (Think nursing home, shut-ins, singles, sick people, those who have recently lost a loved one; you get the idea.) These Valentine Tear and Paste Activities for Kids would be easy to make for this use.
  

Handmade Valentines Cards

Supplies:

• Construction paper - pink, red, white (any or all)
• Glue
• Stickers (scrap booking stickers are great, but any will work)
  
• Real lace or a heart-shaped paper doily
• Scissors
• Pen or markers
• Glitter pen or regular glitter (optional)

Directions

1. Cut a large heart out of construction paper. (A nice idea is to cut out another smaller version in a different color to glue on top of the big heart.)
2. Cut your paper doily so that you can glue it around the edge of your heart. You can also use real lace to glue around the edge.
3. If you cut out a smaller heart, glue it on top of the large heart.
   
4. Write a Valentine's message in the center.
   
5. Add stickers, glitter, and other decorations as desired.

I'll post later with ideas for classroom and homeschool use.