Every Monday night we have something called Family Home Evening (or FHE). Basically, we set Monday night aside as a Family Night, and have a prayer, a song (or songs), a short lesson, an activity, and a treat. Once in a while we'll go on a family outing instead. You can read more about it here. Anyway, so this week, I wanted to talk about love (in honor of Valentine's Day). Why not use Valentine's Day as a time to remember to show love to those around us? We sang the song "Love One Another" and talked about ways we can show love to each other: through our words (saying "I love you" or using kind words) and through our actions. We gave the kids examples like: sharing a toy with your brother, being obedient to Mommy and Daddy, helping someone, giving a hug, etc. Then we played a game where we tossed a ball to someone, and they had to catch it and say a way they could show love to someone in our family.
Next, I showed them this poster I had made. I told them that we are going to try really hard over the next 2 weeks to show love to each other. If I see someone showing love, I am going to secretly write what they did and put it in our Valentine mailbox (more on that later). I told them that they can watch for people showing love, too. Each night we will open our mailbox and see if there are any hearts inside. We will read what the hearts say and put them on the big heart on our poster. The goal is to fill it up by Valentine's Day! (You can see that my 6 year-old was super excited, and right away wrote on a heart about something K had done - so that was our first heart). We did this activity last year, too (though we changed it a bit) and it really helped us focus on the positive things are kids are doing, and motivated them to do good things! Win-win! :)
Next we decorate the Valentine mailbox that I mentioned. I bought a foam mailbox craft kit after Valentine's Day on clearance last year. A decorated shoebox with a slit in the top would work just as well, though!
The boys were very proud of the finished product.
Of course our treat had to follow the "love" theme, so I made a giant heart-shaped rice krispie treat. Yum!
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