Last Minute Valentine's Day Party

A friend of ours was having a Valentine's Day party last Friday. But her girls were sick so it got moved to yesterday. The kids and I were so looking forward to it. But then William woke up Tuesday morning with an awful cough which is the beginning of the cold that is going around right now. I told Will that we couldn't go to the Valentine's Day party so he asked if we could just have one at home. I thought it sounded like fun so I got busy.

We are house sitting for my sister in law so we have a little more space which makes everything just a little bit more fun. I spent about an hour making decorations and games. First we made cookies together. With all our allergies, I found the perfect recipe for Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies. It is egg free, gluten free (if you use gluten free flour), nut free, and dairy free. And super yummy! The kids loved helping to make these cookies.

First I measured all the ingredients and put them in small dishes. The kids enjoy it more when they don't have to sit and wait for me to measure each ingredient. 

Next we started adding ingredients together. They LOVED this step.

 I learned from a friend to set the mixer on a chair so the kids can reach it without having to stand on the chairs and hover over the table. It is much more enjoyable for them and for me. 

While the cookies were baking I set the table.

William made a fox mask earlier that he just had to have in the photo :-)

Now we were ready to play games. I cut out hearts (seen on the back wall in the above photo) and put dots on each one. They looked like dominoes. The game was just that the kids got to choose a heart to take down and we counted the dots on the back of their heart. Who ever got the most points (dots on hearts) won the game. They loved this and all of them were counting right along with me for each heart.

For the next game I cut three hearts, each a different color. Then I cut the hearts into 3 or 4 pieces and hid the pieces around the house. The kids each were assigned to a certain color. They ran around the house to find their color pieces then brought them to the table and put together their hearts like a puzzle. The really LOVED this game. I will do it again with all sorts of shapes depending on the theme. Here they are assembling their hearts. I saved the outline of the heart to make it a little easier for them to put it together. I made Will's into four pieces and a little more difficult. Tanner's was 3 pieces and Jenn's was also three pieces but much easier. You can make it for each kid's learning level.

Last we did a craft. I cut a bunch of small hearts and gave them each a piece of paper and crayon. I showed them how you can lay the heart under our paper and color over it. This makes the heart appear on the white paper. This was a little too hard for Jenn and Tanner but Will was really impressed by it. He loved it.

Pep was sleeping during all this, but I might as well share her super cute Valentine's Day photo: