Valentine Fun with Mustaches

Valentines Day is not a romantic, love forever kind of holiday at our home. I have no partner in this parenting journey right now and none of the teens in my home are dating. So our Valentines Day preparations are friendship oriented and geared towards early elementary aged kids right now.

Valentine’s Day has become quite commercialized and can be seen as a duty instead of a day to mark friendship and love. There are some mighty cute store-bought valentines out there for kids to exchange at school. But it seems to be another ‘has to get done’ chore or piece of homework instead of something fun.

——————————

However, for ANY holiday or celebration, if we choose to participate, I insist that my kids approach it with the consciousness of why the holiday exists and how it makes sense to honor it. In the case of the annual Valentine’s Day exchanges at school, I ask the kids to talk to me about friendship, share anything special about friends at school or elsewhere and how can we make it fun for our friends and special people. In other words, I make sure we have a Valentine project to work on while we celebrate the season.

This year, we spent several days over a two week period to get our Valentines prepared. It’s now the night before ‘heart day’ and the Valentine cards are signed and stashed into manila envelopes, one package for each kiddo. We got our mustaches on this year and enjoyed a fun photo shoot in our living room.

I purchased a couple of sets of die-cut mustaches with small craft sticks and we made photobooth style mustaches to hold up to our faces for pictures. Part of the project was gluing the props together. What kid doesn’t like glue projects?

I set up my white backdrop one day while the kids were at school and my teen helped with a huge stash of pink and red curling ribbon. When the younger kids got home, we were ready for several sets of photos. I had to get at least one photo of each with a mustache in the appropriate spot. We also got silly pictures of curling ribbon everywhere and mustaches waving around. We got some really cute regular photos… a couple are even worth framing. And we had fun!!!

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

Once the pictures were done, it was my job to edit everything and get cards ready to print. Yesterday after school was the time to sort and sign their cards and today, real mustache props were attached to each card. Separate cards are ready for their bus driver, for daddy and for grandma and grandpa. The rest are bundled up and ready for the school day tomorrow and all their respective friendship parties.

The part that I really enjoyed in this whole project (besides my love of photography) was hearing the kids name and explain what they liked (or found difficult) about classmates. Some comments were priceless and I sent a note to teachers about what my kids really think about their class.

• 

• 

• 

————————–

Now that the kids are done with theirs, I will turn to you…….

I ‘mustache’ you a question….. will you be my friend?

• 

• 

• 

—–

I’d really love to have you along for the journey! Sign up here to get email notes every time I post a new article. There are a lot more stories to come!!!