It's Valentine's Day!

I think the best thing I have done for this year's Valentine's Day is to make and teach Sophie the hand sign for "I Love You". Now we can make the simple yet powerful hand gesture whenever we cannot say it out loud. We did it this morning when she set off for school in her Papa's car. It made her grin as though we now share a special little secret. It took her some time to master making the hand sign but she was very proud when she did eventually.

Today is Valentine's Day. I admit we were a little behind because we are barely done with Chinese New Year crafts. Still, we managed to complete our little display for Valentine’s Day. I dropped the idea of a lapbook because I could not find simple activities for Sophie. It is also not easy to explain the significance of Valentine’s Day. Instead, we concentrated on crafts and the general feeling of “love” for one another.

I am not sure what they are called, but I call it “love capsules”. I thought it would fun for Sophie to put some scraps or beads inside and seal them. True enough, she was very excited. In fact, she started the craft without me. She took a piece of my ribbon and stuffed it inside. Then she showed it to me proudly.

I had to entice her to open it again and put more “stuff” inside. But I think she was brilliant to have started it off with the ribbon inside. The effect is great! I also took the opportunity to let her practice spelling her own name although she could do so already. Good fun anyway!

The end products look better than I have expected. I would not have thought of stuffing ribbons inside. Sophie can be so inspiring at times.

With Ah Gong (very excited about his new handphone) and Ah Mah (kept asking me to switch on cartoons for Sophie) around, I could not get Sophie’s attention long enough to make paper flowers. So, I had to finish them myself. The petals of the first flowers were made of tissue paper while those of the second were made of construction paper. I was teasing out the differences. I like the looks of tissue paper petals but I think the folds of construction paper make more realistic petals. Anyhow, it did not really matter. I still got Sophie sniffing them as though they were real.

We still have lots of art materials left, so I took pipe cleaners and twisted them into two hearts joined.

One can never go wrong with pipe cleaners.

Finally (after Ah Gong and Ah Mah left), I gave Sophie a heart-shaped canvas panel and let her have a bit of open-ended art session. She started with painting the panel purple, then pink and blue and yellow.

Then I provided her with paint, confetti, foam hearts, pom poms, rhinestones, plastic eyes, beads and glitter glue. And she became unstoppable, pasting almost everything in sight onto the panel.

The end product looks a little weird but I guess it is okay since she did this on her own. I am so glad that she has become competent enough to do basic art and craft all by herself!

When all the items are combined, we end up with a display for Valentine's Day. Sophie took out her Disney Princess figurines so we stuck them onto the shelf as part of the display. After all, they are a romantic bunch. I included sweets, cakes and biscuits because those are common gift items for Valentine's Day (of course they are cute too!). And a little book Biscuit's Valentine's Day by Alyssa Satin Capucilli to complete the occasion.

So there you have it! Our little Valentine's Day Special Display. May everyone have a very loved and cherished Valentine's Day!