Valentine´s Day fun

I have so many future posts in my head waiting to be written but unfortunately just can´t seem to find time to do them all so I´ll start with one of the most recent events, Valentine´s Day. Even though Valentine´s Day is done and dusted for this year, thought I´d still post about the activities we did this year so you can maybe refer to them or do them the following year.
                                                 
 Valentine´s Day is not celebrated as much in Spain as in the UK and the US , where it is widely celebrated so as I like to teach my children British culture as well as the language, I like to do activities so that they learn about this special day. Plus it´s a great way to learn lots of vocabulary relating to love and emotions. The only book we have in English that fits the topic of love and Valentine´s Day is Guess How Much I Love You? by Sam MacBratney,and is ideal to read on Valetine´s Day. I also went to the library a few days before Valentine´s Day and got some other books in the majority language about love, Pedro está enamorado by Sara Pennypacker & Petra Mathers &  Besos Para Cada Momento by Antoine Guillope. As they are in Spanish and my husband is the one who reads Spanish books to our children,I can´t really tell you much about them although I think my husband didn´t like them too much and thought that the topic of Pedro está enamorada was too old for my daughter although I think I disagree but would have to read the book to form a true opinion.                                            .

In the UK they sell some sweets all year round called Love Hearts  (pictured top left and top right hand corner)which have little hearts and a little message on them, which says things like "Blue Eyes", "I Love You" etc on them so I asked my mum to bring some when she came. You can probably order them online at shops like British Corner Shop and the British Foodstore Online, which sell and deliver internationally.I also downloaded the free Valentine´s Day activities from Bilingual Avenue and decided to do a scavenger hunt type thing by hiding the sweets around the house and then when we found the sweets, we would read the messages on the sweets before eating them(working on reading skills in a fun way!)My daughter loved this activity especially as it involved sweets....she´s got a very sweet tooth just like he mum!

We then went all arts and craftsy and made some homemade Valentine´s cards with pink and red card I had bought....I also brought out the fingerpaint,thinking it´d be something fun and easy that my 17 month old could join in with-what a mistake!! Paint nearly ended up everywhere...it was pretty messy! I let my daughter get creative with her card and for my card(or joint effort!) I made hearts using my thumb prints and then tried to get my daughter and son´s handprints. I had wanted my daughter to write her card in English but as it was for her Daddy,who she always talks to in Spanish, I guess it was quite normal for her to choose to write it in Spanish(the majority language)After we´d left the cards to dry out and I´d cleaned up the kids and the mess, I wanted to do the Love Coupons but by this point my daughter had become tired and no amount of persuading her could get her to join in or do any other activities unfortunately. So, on the one hand we had a lot of fun doing these activities, however on the other hand I was  a bit disappointed that maybe it hadn´t generated as much vocabulary etc about Valentine´s Day but in the end the main thing is that they (or we!) enjoyed doing them.