Getting Ready for Valentine's Day at School

Because we don't celebrate Valentine's Day at home AND because it's hard to get a boy motivated to write cards to his teachers and address pre-made (come on!  PRE-MADE....just write your name) cards, I don't look forward to this "quality" time with Collin....at least getting him started.  Once he gets started, he does settle down and is pleasant to be around.

Because we have 1) two cards to create and write for his teachers, 2) addressing cards and including a small gift (candy from the Dollar Store this time) and 3)

The designing and decorating a bag or box to hold his cards, I knew better than to tackle this all at once on the night before the celebration at school.  I gave him a choice of what he wanted to start on but I did want him to know what needed to be accomplished before next Tuesday morning.  It was overwhelming at first to him and he started to cry.  Because of the extra homework and less time to play this week already, he is a really cranky kid right now.  I let him finish and sooth himself before explaining again that picking one of the tasks could take less than 20 minutes if he would just pick one and start working on it.  We could then play a little PS4 (so exciting!) before he had to read a book and go to bed.

He chose to design and decorate a large grocery bag which would hold the cards he will receive on Valentine's Day.  I asked him what his design was and what colors, construction paper, markers or glitter he wanted to use and he said, "I am going to just write my name on the bag and that should be good."  After explaining that this was not enough and that he should not rush it because he was not going to play PS4 until after 20 minutes, he sat down and looked at the bag.  I started to cut out some pink and red hearts out of construction paper and laid them next to him while he was looking at the bag. Look!  There were marking sitting next to him as well.  "I have a good idea Mom.  I can write my name like this on the front of the bag and then write 'Happy Valentine's Day'."  I said that was a really good idea and that I would be happy to help him with the design and colors. 

Here is how the bag turned out.  Notice the hole shaped as a hard for the cards to go into.  If the student could not figure that out, Collin included the word "cards" with arrows pointing to the hole.  I like how he used the outline of the heart from the construction paper as part of the design and setting one colored heart on top of the other colored heart.  Not bad for 20 minutes of time...plus, we did have fun working on this project together.