By Donna McMorrow

Valentine’s Day provides a wonderful opportunity to celebrate the love of family and friends. While Valentine’s is often associated with romantic love, it is a holiday that can be shared with your family. The holiday also gives you an opportunity to teach your children about caring for others. Here are some fun ways to celebrate with your loved ones.

1. Spend some time at your table talking with your child about Valentine’s Day and love.

Remind your child how much God loves them and how much you love them. Share how you care for others and the world around you. You can also ask them questions to see what love means to them. What do they love? How do they show others they love them? How do they know that you love

them? You may be surprised by what they tell you!

2. Show love to your neighbors.

You and your child can give your neighbor a bag of microwave popcorn with a note that says, “You make my heart POP!” You can also model love for others by offering to pick up groceries for an elderly neighbor.

3. Make memories with your child with an action-packed family fun night.

You can play these quick games using readily available items.

Heart-A-Stack!

What you need: Valentine's Conversation hearts!

Using the conversation hearts, players must stack as many as they can in one minute. If your pile falls over, you have to start over. At the end of one minute, the player with the tallest stack wins!

Love Letters

What you need: Valentine’s conversation hearts and cups.

Give each player a cup filled with the same number of conversation hearts. Players have to dump out their conversation hearts and race to place them either in alphabetical order (more difficult) or to sort them by color (easier—for littles).

Finding LOVE!

What you need: 25 red plastic cups, a Sharpie marker, table surface.

To set up the game: Write L, O, V, and E (each letter separately) on the bottom of four of the cups.

Turn the cups right side up and mix them in with the other cups. Arrange the cups in five rows of five. Taking turns, each player turns over a cup. If they find a letter, they may turn over another cup. If they have not found a letter, they return the cup, and their turn is complete. Hint: Pay attention to where the letters are found! The winning player needs to turn over L, O, V, E in order.

 Donna McMorrow and her husband have been married for 41 years. She is a retired special education teacher, adoptive parent, cancer survivor and child of the King. In her free time, she enjoys reading, photography and painting.