It's important for families to show their love for one another, so what better time than Valentine's Day to play some game, engage in some fun activities, all designed to show each other love and support?

One fun activity is all about giving each other "snaps" for being who they are. Over the course of the year, mom and dad, and the kids as well, can add "snaps" to a special jar or containers. These "snaps" might include things like "dad helped me build my pinewood derby car" or "Joey read books to his sister each night without complaint". Read these little slips of good things, thank each other for caring and empty the jar to start it again for another year.

At dinner on Valentine's night, have each family member tell others why they love them. What about dad made mom love him? Why does Joey love his sister? What about sissy is special to dad? It might seem a little corny at first, but in the end, everyone will enjoy hearing wonderful, positive things about themselves.

One fun family game involves family trivia. This game is particularly fun if the children are a bit older and there are at least 2 children in the family. Mom (or dad) creates a trivia game that looks something like this: there will be a series of index cards with a bit of family trivia on each card. Someone draws a card and tries to answer the question correctly. If correct, they get a point. The person with the most points at the end of the game gets a prize or extra chocolate syrup on their dessert. Some questions might be things like this:

*Which one of us suffered a broken leg at the age of 8?
*Which of us, at the age of 3, flushed an entire box of Tide down the toilet?
*Which of us snuck into mom and dad's room every night until he or she was 6 years old?

At a certain age, children begin to enjoy preparing meals for mom and dad. For a fun Valentine's activity, the children could be asked to prepare a meal for mom and dad. Ideally, this would be breakfast in bed and could include foods that are traditional "romantic" foods (like strawberries and chocolate) or whatever the kids want to make. They might even like to prepare a special Valentine's Day menu and let mom and dad choose off the menu. This would be a fun tradition to start as an annual event on Valentine's Day.

Consider a fun family game of "hidden hearts". In this game, children are given clues to find chocolate hearts hidden around the house. The clues can be easy or more complicated to figure out depending on the ages of the children. If one or more children are very young, mom and dad can help them with the clues. When they find the hearts, they can eat them, but mom or dad, remember where you hid the hearts and be sure to count how many are found, so there aren't any left to get ugly in the house!

Finally, a fun family activity around Valentine's Day is to make cards for other people. Have the kids make handprint cards for the grandparents or have the kids make cards for their friends. Handmade cards can be so much more meaningful than the store-bought kind and kids learn a lot from the experience of putting their hearts (literally) into making the card for others.

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