OMSH

Love is in the air…or is that the smell of waffles? Its hard to tell. Either way, Valentine’s Day is in five days and we have been preparing for over a week! I don’t particularly care for commercial Valentine’s Day cards, and the kids historically have liked to create their own (I have too), so I decided to blend Valentine’s Day with a smidgeon of learnin’ this year for a quick “unit study”.

Joined by my friend Cindy and her boys, we drove to Hobby Lobby in a neighboring city to purchase the supplies the kids needed to construct Valentine’s Day cards. A few days before, the kids made a list of names of friends and family they would consider when buying their supplies.

There were a few lessons to learn…

Lesson #1: When making cards, think of the person you’re making the card for, not so much yourself. A hard concept when choosing supplies to make cards.

Each child was given an envelope with $10 and a coupon for 40% off a single item. They were to stay within their budgeted monies, and of course, we helped them as needed with the math.

Lesson #2: Spending within your means.

Lesson #3: Learning (in Emelie’s case), or being exposed to (in the other kids’ case), the concept of saving a certain percentage off an item.

I stayed close by Kenny and helped him understand he didn’t need a sticker pack for each friend – that he could have a general “theme” and use it for a few boys – same with the girls.

He and Meredith also split the cost of a few packs of stickers and scrapbook papers; the package contained 2 or more sheets of stickers and the single sheets were larger than they needed for single cards. This proved to save the two of them $3.00 each – for the “girl” cards especially.

Lesson #4: Sharing resources; splitting expenditures.

Overall it took about an hour for all 5 kids to sort out their stickers. Because they were also making cards for each other, there was a lot of sneaking around and stashing stickers on the bottom of their baskets to keep their siblings or friends from seeing them.

I took part as well – with my own $10 budget and 40% coupon. I wanted to make cards for Jeff, the kids, my parents, and a couple of my friends.

With supplies purchased (and cardstock, as well as glue sticks, hot glue, sequins, string, paint, markets, crayons, scissors, this, that, and the other at home) we headed back to OMSHville for grilled ham and cheese sandwiches and to CRAFT.

Four hours later we had a ganormous mess all over the table, floor and kitchen, but who cares, because we also had a handful of fabulously creative, unique cards. The kids and I had several cards left to make, so we continued crafting our Valentine Cards into the next day.

When all was said and done we still needed some “filler” mini-cards to give out at the Homeschool Valentine’s Day Party for those children my kids don’t know closely (yet). Fortunately, Secret Agent Josephine released a FREE set of Mini Valentine’s Day Cards again this year; Meredith chose to use those. If you don’t remember, we used the cards she designed for Valentine’s Day 2009 at last year’s party.

Download Secret Agent Josephine’s Valentine’s Day Cards

Emelie and Kenny selected a photo to use for their cards.

The only thing left to do was decorate the boxes, and after dropping in a couple of Payless stores, we found the shoe boxes we needed! A big THANK YOU to the Payless in Conroe, Texas, for giving us 5 boxes (3 for us and 2 for my friend’s boys) to use for this purpose!

To see the entire collection of cards, check out my Valentine’s Day Cards 2010 flickr set.

Happy EARLY Valentine’s Day Y’all! Enjoy your preparations and remember to give each other BIG KISS*HUGS!

Homeschoolers! Save $5.00 off your first order at Sonlight, Heather’s favorite homeschool curriculum company.