The Ultimate Valentine Homeschool Experience

The holidays are amazing!! But sometimes they can also create some chaos that distracts from our normal school routine. What if I told you that you can easily take the holiday excitement and channel it into "The Ultimate Homeschool Learning Experience."? 

If you’re new here, I’m Tonya Johnson, founder of Helping Hearts Homeschool where I specialize in working with parents and ministry leaders who are focused on building a solid foundation for the next generation. I believe that it’s important to stay ahead of the crowd when it comes to keeping the attention of our children. As homeschoolers, we have the unique advantage of being able to tailor our child's education in a way that fosters that child/parent relationship and ignites their love for both learning and Jesus. The world is fighting for their hearts; we need to fight 10x harder. 

Whether you're wanting to create a valentine learning experience for your kiddo, or you'd like to invite friends over for a day full of learning and fun, we've got you covered! Personally, we do both. We love turning the holidays into a two week school period. Week 1: We have a ton of fun crafts, learning centers, and read alouds along with our regular school work. Week 2: Spirit Week! We love to theme this to the holiday and end with a "party day" aka themed homeschool day with friends. We also completed our Valentine Shopping Project during spirit week this year. Below is the schedule we used for our Valentine Homeschool Day this year as well as the spirit week ideas we used. 

You can download editable versions of these along with all of our math and literacy centers by grabbing our BossKids Activity Pack. By ordering through this link, you'll get your February pack for $1 and then each month you'll receive a new pack with new learning centers as well as 50+ character building and fun, themed activity pages. Check out the highlight video of our "party" day here. So now that you have the 30k foot overview, let's dive in to each subject individually. Some of these are affiliate links, some of these are just links I've pulled off of websites, so I can share certain products with you. 

For Bible and History, we used the Valentine Unit Study pack from Gather Round Homeschool. We didn't use every activity she included for the areas outside of Bible/History, but what we did use was well worth the price of the pack. We covered what God says about love, why some people dislike Valentine's Day, the origin of Valentine's Day, and fun Valentine traditions from all over the globe. The girls specifically liked the "week of sweets." 

For Math and Language Arts we did 4 fun centers (hands on learning games). There are several for you to choose from when you purchase the February BossKids Activity Pack. We have centers for Pre-K through 5th Grade currently. 

This activity didn't quite go as planned, but the girls still had a ton of fun! I got little plastic trays from the dollar store, cheap shaving cream, and food coloring for this activity. The idea is to put a thin layer of shaving cream on each tray and have the child spread it out evenly, then they can use the end of a paint brush, qtip, their finger, etc. to "write" the words in the shaving cream. Well... I put way too much shaving cream on their trays and they ended up not being able to see the words they wrote. What we did instead, since we were already past the point of no return, was play in the shaving cream/food coloring mixture for a few min, then we took turns saying a valentine word and spelling it out loud while writing it in the shaving cream. It wasn't exactly how I planned, but they had fun doing it without forfeiting the spelling practice. That's what matters! Of course, when we were done with all of our words, we spent plenty of time playing in the mess before walking out to the dumpster to dispose of the shaving cream filled trays. Here are a list of valentine words you can use for your own Valentine-themed spelling activity: candy, flowers, cupid, chocolate, pink, red, white, hearts, card, love, party, kiss. 

Ok, Science was our main attraction for the day, as it normally is with these homeschool parties because let's face it, which kid doesn't like making a huge mess and calling it school? We did three separate Science/Stem activities. 

Now, our family is no stranger to slime. My daughter has been obsessed for years. What we are strangers to however is making slime. I'll admit, I was very nervous to undertake that adventure. My view was a little skewed thanks to an Elmer Slime Kit we purchased for a homeschool party when Glori was in kindergarten. The slime never came to consistency, multiple pieces of clothing were ruined, and I swore I'd stick with the store bought stuff from then on. Fast forward to this year, and my daughter talked me into giving it one more try. Long story short, it was the easiest thing ever! All that to say, if you've had a bad experience with slime making, give it one more shot using this fool proof recipe. 

1. Add 1/2 cup clear or white Elmers glue to your bowl

2. If you're going to color your slime, now's the time. Mix your coloring agent of choice into the glue until your desired shade is reached. There are a few ways to color slime, but we've only used food coloring as of now. I will tell you that the the heavier you are with the food coloring, the more likely you'll be to have dyed hands during step #5, so be prepared.

3. Mix 1 tsp of baking soda into your glue mixture. 

4. Slowly add 1 tbsp of saline solution (contact solution) We like to add this a little bit at a time vs the whole tbsp at a time. 

5. At this stage, you have to take the slime out and knead/play with it with your hands. It's gooey at first, that's normal. Once you (your child) plays with it for a bit, it becomes more of the slime consistency we're used to when we're buying slime from a store. 

Optionals: Glitter and other add ins can always be added in AFTER the slime has reached desired consistency. I've put together a DIY Slime Kit on my amazon store front of materials we use and love during our slime making sessions. One option we like is making clear slime and adding a bunch of chunky glitter or foil pieces to the finished product to give it the illusion of being colored without actually having to use food coloring. 

This experiment was so much fun and perfectly combined math and science. All you need is oil (we used baby oil), red food coloring, and alkaseltzer tablets. Follow the directions here.  

This was the simplest STEM activity I had planned for the day, yet it kept them occupied the longest. Literally all you need is a big handful of gummy bears and toothpicks for each kid. Let them go to town to build the tallest structure they can and see what they come up with! 

This is where I've linked all of my decorations, photo props, games, and crafts in one Amazon cart. Also, when you purchase the February BossKids Pack, you'll get a bingo game and a dice game that you can use at your party also. 

The shocking truth I hear often in my DMs from many of you is that you want to throw all of the homeschool parties, but you just don’t have the finances. I’d love to tell you that it’s not expensive, but I’d be lying. Yes, even dollar store supplies add up.
Now, I’m not saying you have to spend thousands of dollars, but I’ve been in your position. I’ve been in the place where $100 felt like thousands of dollars because we just didn’t have it in the budget 😭
Here’s what I’ve found. Social media is a gold mind for homeschool moms, IF you know how to use it.
☑️Courses
☑️Math and Literacy Centers
☑️Unit Study Packs
☑️Curriculum Planners
☑️Kids’ Subscription Services (Themed Activities)
These are just 5 of 100s of products that my students learn to make through the Homeschool Creator Course. If you can dream it, we can help you create it 🤩
Interested? Click Here for more info. 

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