Children love to decorate and prepare for Valentine’s Day. Whether you are a mom or a grandma, a teacher or teach your children at home it’s time to start thinking about crafting some Valentine’s Day decorations.

Make your own colorful conversations hearts – let them cut hearts out of pastel colored construction paper and write loving messages on them – hang them around the house, around the kitchen, around the classroom – or use the backs of them to write love letters and mail them to the special people in their lives.

Make a heart tree – find a branch and spray paint it white – put it in a large can with homemade playdough in the bottom to make a stand. Let the kids hang a variety of sizes and colors of hearts from the tree – or use identical sized heart stickers stuck back to back with a loop of thread or yarn caught in the adhesive- hang them from the tree. If you put this decoration close to a heating vent of door the hearts will constantly be moving or waving in the breeze – this makes a lovely decoration!

Use foam hearts shapes to create some bright, easy valentines to decorate your home, or to give to someone you love.

If you always celebrate with a special meal for supper on February 14th with your family let the kids help make place-mats, napkin rings, and glue heart stickers to the paper napkins.

While I was growing up I think I remember my mom always making the same dinner to celebrate – she was going with a red-theme. We always had cooked elbow macaroni with tomato soup on it instead of cheese (don’t add any milk or water to the soup), beets, a bowl of stewed tomatoes, and cooked spam. I think this was her way of trying to make the meal special.

I know my kids would not have liked this at all, but I took the idea and modified it to make it special for my family. I added a drop or two of red food coloring to their milk in the morning so when they poured it on their oatmeal they thought it was kind of cool. As I put their oatmeal into the bowls I dropped in a few red-hots, I then continued to cover them with a bit more oatmeal. When they stirred in their pink milk they were always surprised to see the oatmeal turning red.

When they got older and thought they were “too cool” for oatmeal, I made scones and frosted them with pink frosting and added some sprinkles – they loved it!