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February 14th is just about here.  Do you have special plans for this feast day for Saint Valentine?

My husband and I are hoping to spend some time together on Valentine's evening while my older kids help watch our younger kids and other kids at our church for a youth group babysitting night.

Here are some ways to celebrate this special day in 7 Quick Takes hosted by Kelly at This Ain't The Lyceum.

Next Friday, Feb. 14, 2014, is Saint Valentine's Day and our Catholic homeschool group will be gathering to celebrate this special and popular Feast Day both in the sacred and secular world.

I was looking back through my blog archives to get some inspiration for a book reading and craft idea for the children attending the party next week. 

Listed below are some past posts of mine that have lots of ideas and links that I will be perusing myself in order to plan next week's fun day!  Enjoy!

We {Heart} Jesus and Valentine Crafts (2010) (This post tells about the greatest Valentine and the devotion to the Sacred Heart.  Also, I'll be reading the book Saint Valentine by Robert Sabuda again this year)
Happy Saint Valentine's Day! (2011) (Another post with more information about Saint Valentine and how to make these sweet treats along with a wedding pic and "Love" license plate that I gave my hubby)

Valentine Candy Canes  (Do you happen to have any candy canes leftover from Christmas?  You can make these lovely cards)

Saint Valentine's Day 2013 (Need a sweet (healthy) treat for Valentine's Day?)

This year I hope to print out these great holy Valentine cards for my cupcakes to hand out to their friends vs. investing in the store bought cards:
 

Not only are some people unaware that Valentine's Day originated from a great saint, Saint Valentine, but I think more people do not know that today is the feast day of two other saints who were brothers in Greece in the 800s.  Their names are Saint Cyril and Saint Methodius.  You can ready more about these saints' fascinating and inspiring lives HERE.






Now onto Saint Valentine...He was another great saint whose name and contributions have sadly been forgotten in our commercialized world filled with cards, candy, chocolates, and flowers.  My cupcakes do get excited about this day and they enjoy exchanging Valentine cards and candy with their homeschool friends, but I'm glad we also talk about the person behind this fun day.  Here's a little about Saint Valentine from Happy Saints:

St. Valentine (3rd Century AD) was a holy priest and bishop who lived during a time when Christians were not welcomed in the Roman Empire. He helped many who were imprisoned or were hiding from Roman soldiers. In the end, St. Valentine himself was captured and killed for his faith. He died on February 14, which became known as St. Valentine's Day.

St. Valentine's Day became a lovers' holiday because it was said that St. Valentine was killed for marrying Christian couples. Another tale had him writing letters of encouragement to the jailer's daughter when he was in prison.

What is important is that St. Valentine loved as Jesus loves. Jesus loves us so much He sacrificed His Life to save us. Likewise, St. Valentine risked and lost his life while helping others through selfless love. Let us love each other as Jesus loves us!

Download a free St. Valentine Printable Card here:
http://www.parousian.com/victor/HappySaintsStValentineCard.pdf

Today our Catholic Homeschool group gathered for our annual Saint Valentine's Day party.  Each child brought in store-bought/homemade Valentines to share with their friends after they decorated a white lunch bag for themselves.  Each child also decorated a white bag to be donated to a child at a local outreach ministry and cards and candy were put in the donated bags from the children.  So in the spirit of Saint Valentine our children shared their friendship and love to another child through the donated bags.  After we all said a prayer together it was time to start the festivities.  Here are some pictures from our fun day: 


 Here are two bags one of our students made, one to be donated and one for her Valentine treats.

The bags on the left were lined up and were the ones the children made to be donated, while the picture on the right shows all the children's decorated bags from our homeschool group.  


Then it was time for everyone to line up and drop their Valentines into their friends bags and goodies were put into the donated bags as well.  


Besides the bag decorating and Valentine deliveries, the kids were also excited about the snack items all the families brought.  I brought these "berry" sweet, easy, and healthy strawberry hearts that were devoured, especially by my son!  Clean, pull stem, cut in half, use paring knife to cut a small "v" at top = berry sweet treat!  

Here is a collage of some other sweet treats: 




Here are some ways we have celebrated Saint Valentine's Day in years past.  Just click on title to take you to the post:

We {Heart} Jesus and Valentine Crafts (2010)

Happy Saint Valentine's Day! (2011)

Happy Saint Valentine's Day! (2012)

Today our homeschool group celebrated Valentine's Day with a potluck lunch and the 30 children present decorated brown lunch bags for themselves and white lunch bags to be donated to needy families in our local area.  Then the bags were filled with Valentine cards and goodies from their friends and candy and cards were placed in the bags for the needy. My oldest "cupcake" made the white bag that has a sticker of Jesus and she wrote "The best Valentine is Jesus."  Here are some pictures of the yummy and easy pretzel treats that I brought that were devoured by all the children.

These pretzel treats are so easy to make and my "cupcakes" enjoy unwrapping each Hershey kiss
(and I love them doing that part too!) to put on each pretzel.  For directions on how to make these treats go HERE and scroll down the post a little to see the directions.  These treats are perfect all year round with any seasonal M&Ms :)

For my Valentine's post this year I thought I would also share posts from the past that highlight some crafts and ideas I have done to celebrate this special day!  Enjoy and Happy Saint Valentine's Day!

Happy Saint Valentine's Day!

We {Heart} Jesus and Valentine Crafts

Valentine Candy Canes and CHRISTmas Crackers!

I am linking this post to: 

 

I just found this photo titled "Sacred Heart of Jesus" on Photobucket.  I've never seen a sacred heart image  like this before so I thought I would post it here since the greatest valentine we have ever received is Jesus' sacred heart. 


This past Friday morning our homeschool group had our monthly gathering called VIA (Virtues In Action)  where we split up into age groups, a parent reads some books to the children and then we do a craft activity that is centered around the books theme.  Each lesson is about how we can live out our faith more virtuously.  I was the lead teacher for our Pre-K through 2nd grade group.

I first read the book, Saint Valentine, which is a beautiful story of the love and sacrifices that Valentine, a holy priest and physician in Rome, made to share his love for God and heal his patients with herbal medicines and prayer.


I spoke with the children that many people may not know that Valentine's Day is in honor of a real man named Valentine and the book I read tells a little about how he was persecuted, jailed, and eventually killed because he was a Christian.

On the cover of this book and on all the illustrations there shows beautiful mosaic artwork. So I headed over to Lacy's blog at Catholic Icing for some inspiration and there were several Valentine craft ideas on her post HERE.  One idea from Ten Kids and a Dog went along perfectly with the book .

So our group made these beautiful mosaic hearts inspired by Ten Kids and a Dog's post.  We had several different holy cards of different saints (not just Saint Valentine) so we had the children pick a holy card and glue it to the center and then they decorated with the squares.  (We skipped the glitter)

     
After completing the mosaic hearts, we went into our next activity.  On Lacy's site there was this cute idea titled, John 3:16 Valentine Craft . I didn't have time to prepare this craft for all the children so I modified it a little to make it a group activity.  I had the children look behind their chairs because I had one of our moms tape a heart to 9 different seats.  Each heart had a number on it from 1 to 9.  On the other side of the heart was a letter.  I asked the child with heart #1 to come up to the front to tape his heart to blank heart.  So the #1 heart had a "V" on the other side. Heart #2 had a "A" written on the other side and so on.  So our final picture looked like this:


I hope to do this activity with all my children at home closer to Valentine's Day and I may use the candy hearts as suggested on Lacy's blog.

I then read this beautiful book, The Most Beautiful Thing in the World  published by Precious Life Books.
Here is a review from Amazon:  The youngest angel in Heaven is sent on a quest to find the most beautiful thing on earth. A red rose? Birds and butterflies? Puppies and kittens? A beautiful baby? No, each time the other angels send him back to earth to keep looking. Finally the angel visits the church and finds a surprising answer. Illustrated with full-page colorful pictures, this simple story shows the importance of the true love of God. An endearing, delightful tale also suitable for small children. Text in both English and Spanish.

The children and I really enjoyed this book that has wonderful illustrations and such an important message.  I then had the children do another craft.  I got my idea once again from Lacy's blog at Catholic Icing where several people linked up Valentine ideas HERE.  I liked the "cute coffee filter heart garland" that was linked up by Peppermint Plum, but when I tried out this cute craft myself, I quickly realized it was not going to be an easy one for little hands.  So I modified this craft too and just drew an outline of half a heart on a folded coffee filter like this:


Then each child cut out the half heart and when they opened the filter, there was a heart in the center like this:
The children glued their heart onto a colored sheet of paper and decorated them with crayons and markers.




These coffee filter crafts are going to be given to the assisted living residents that we visit each month.

It was great to read such lovely books and do so many fun and easy crafts! Thanks Catholic Icing and all those that linked up their Valentine crafts to Lacy's blog! It was fun to do these activities even if I had to change them up a little bit to match our group's abilities and interests.

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