Valentine’s Day Rabbit Trails {Handicrafts & Books About Mail}
Ah, rabbit trails! I love them when it comes to following the spark of your child’s interests and imagination… I’m not talking about urban dictionary’s idea of rabbit trails here: “the veering off subject or of the point of the conversation; a story or explanation leading nowhere; making statements with no real purpose just for the sake of stating it.” NOPE.
This year, we are pursuing a few rabbit trails relating to Valentine’s Day.
It seems natural that Valentine’s Day would correspond to mail. Creating homemade valentines is a perfect pandemic activity. This year we have joined a homeschool Valentine exchange through the mail, with participants from all over the country. So, we are taking a dive into mail, letter writing, the post office, and we’re expanding our learning to include more of the history of communication– the Pony Express, the telegraph, radio, and telephones. We are exploring these topics through picture books, many of them picture book biographies. I’ll post a few below.
PS. We were inspired to make the heart valentines above using Art for Kids Hub’s video that you can find here. We added cutout hearts for eyes and layered googly eyes on top too.
We’ll combine our valentine exchange with geography as we track where all of our Valentines come from. We are pumped! Redeem social media by asking your faraway friends if they’d be interested in exchanging and I bet you’ll have some takers 🙂
We’re also participating in the The Great Backyard Bird Count for the first time this year. It falls February 12-15, 2021, so we will be immersed in a bird study through Valentine’s Day, too. I shared more about that in this post here, which includes the details on how to participate along with our favorite birding books. I’ll say it fits with Valentine’s Day with the “love birds” theme….
We’re also learning some new handicrafts to create handmade valentines for family members. We’re using Rooted Childhood’s Valentine’s Day collection which includes stories, poetry, and recipes in addition to handicraft activities. We’re planning to try wool felting, creating lickable stamps (using gelatin!), a felt and tree branch wall hanging, and maybe a heart pocket doll if we’re really ambitious! These are just a few of the handicrafts described step by step. The total collection is around 50 pages and has 11 handicrafts, 5 activities, and 4 recipes perfect for Valentine’s Day!
Favorite Books About Mail
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Check your library for other rabbit trail topics: Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, Samuel Morse & morse code, Guglielmo Marconi, the pony express.
PS. Celebrating the power of letter writing, take a look at this TED talk called Love Letters to Strangers. It inspired me with its beauty. This is a short video, less than 5 minutes, but it’s for grown ups (nothing vulgar. briefly mentions a man who was planning to take his life. overall the video would have been lost on my kids anyhow).
Happy Valentine’s Day, friends!
