Valentine’s Day shouldn’t just be about romantic relationships. There are traditions for Valentine’s day that will strengthen your family relationships too.
Children’s main role models for learning how to develop healthy loving relationships is their parents. So Valentine’s Day is the perfect opportunity to emphasize to our children the different ways to show and receive love.
Start one or more of these family Valentine’s Day traditions, and everyone will look forward to this holiday each year.
Love to All Wall
This tradition is similar to a Gratitude Wall or a Thanksgiving Tree at Thanksgiving. Start by cutting out hearts from construction or cardstock paper. Then gather the kids together and talk about how there are different types of love. We have love for our family, love for our friends, love for our parents, romantic love, and even love for our pets.
Have the kids write or tell you the names of all the people (and pets) that they love. Write each name on a heart and then tape all the hearts to a poster or straight onto your wall or window. Remember to write each of your children’s names on a heart and to tell them that you love them.
Special Breakfast
Start the day off right with a special Valentine’s Day themed breakfast. Add red food coloring to your pancake batter and then make heart shaped pancakes. If you’ve never done it before, it takes a little practice but it’s not extremely difficult. Or you can always purchase a waffle maker that creates heart shaped waffles.
Make this an extra special breakfast by serving the pancakes or waffles with whip cream, chocolate chips, Nuttela, real maple syrup, or a caramel syrup. You can also leave a little love note or Valentines Day Card under their breakfast plate.
Dinner by Candlelight
Eating dinner by candlelight always feels special, even if you’re just eating pizza. You can go around the table and take turns saying what you love about each person. It’s a special way to end the day, and to make sure each child knows they are loved by everyone in the family.
Love Note Treasure Hunt
This is similar to an Easter Egg Hunt, but this time they are searching for paper hearts that have little notes about why you love them.
You’ll want to set this up either the night before Valentines Day, when all the kids are asleep, or when they are all at school.
If you have more than one kid, you can assign a specific color to each child. So one child is looking for only the pink hearts, another for all the purple hearts, another only for red. Etc.
Even if your child is still too young to read, they will still love this tradition. Just have them gather up the hearts and then read the messages to them.
Vintage Valentine’s Day Cards or Letters
Many families will send out yearly cards to their friends and extended family at Christmas time, but why not make the holiday season a little less stressful and send out a yearly Valentine’s Day card instead?
You can include a family photo and a little snippet about what each person in your family has been doing or learning the past year.
Get the kids involved by having them make traditional Valentine’s Day hearts for grandparents or cousins. You can have them write little messages, draw a picture, and help address and stamp the envelopes. Your family will love it!
I hope you can help make Valentine’s Day extra special for your family by starting one of these Valentine’s Day traditions.
