Tech Savvy Mama

Parenting in the Digital Age

Valentine Crafts, Recipes, Online Games, and Favorite Books

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If you were to come into our house, there’s no mistaking the fact that Valentine’s Day is just a week away.  Little Miss Techie and Captain Computer love each of the holidays but especially enjoy creating decorations to make the house look festive and making sweet treats for those we love.
In the spirit of Valentine’s Day, I thought I’d share some of the things we’ve been doing so you can spend time doing fun things with those you love!

We’ve been crafting!  Here are some of the things we’ve tried or are on this week’s to do list:

    • Practice fine motor skills by making Valentine cards or any of the 14 craft ideas in Savvy Source’s Sweets for our Sweethearts.  One of our favorites is the Valentine Stained Glass.  While Savvy has directions using cellophane, we find that colored tissue paper leftover from gifts works just as well!  

 

 

 

 

Of course we will be eating more than a solitary cherry tomato!
We’ve been planning our Valentine Day menu!  Over the weekend I wrote a post on The LeapFrog Community about how cooking a heart themed Valentine’s Day dinner is a great opportunity to practice math, reading, and science skills.  What’s on our menu?  Heart shaped Valentine Pizza, red fruits and veggies, and heart shaped Rice Krispie treats!  Read all about how I’m integrating learningg into our VDay dinner prep in my post called Preparing Family Friendly Valentine Meal Provides Fun Way to Practice Math, Reading, and Science.

 

We’ve been bundling up, leaving the house, and moving with TeachMama’s Valentine’s Day Scavenger Hunt.

We’ve been becoming more tech savvy with some online Valentine themed educational games like Catch the Hearts Game on A Kids Heart or I Love Shapes on PBS Kids that features Curious George.   A little computer time is a great way to improve hand eye coordination.  Just be sure to preview games before your let your child play to ensure that it is the right level of difficulty for them and be sure your are close by in case they run into difficulty or accidentally click over to other sites. 

Day It Rained Hearts

We’ve been reading! We have a whole collection of books that we love to pull out for each holiday and I just found this story about St. Valentine.  This printable PDF is just right for Little Miss Techie’s first grade self to read on her own and it comes with some comprehension questions at the end.  Otherwise, we’ve been snuggling on the couch with any book about love and Valentine’s Day.  Here are some old and new favorites:  

 

 

 

What are some of your family’s favorite things to do for Valentine’s Day?

 
There’s still plenty of time to enter my Valentine Day giveaways!
I am a paid columnist for The LeapFrog Community but an not required to promote my posts on my personal site.  Some books mentioned above were provided by Scholastic for review.  Others were personally purchased and have been part of our collection for years.  Amazon affiliate links contained in this post.
 

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Original post by Tech Savvy Mama
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