Valentine's Day Ideas for Homeschoolers

For those homeschooling, Valentine's Day isn't quite the same experience as it is for those in public schools. For the homeschooling single parent, the day may hold unpleasant associations, especially if you've found yourself recently single. Even so, Valentine's Day is a great chance to teach your homeschooling children about the many kinds of love they can share with family and friends. Even without a classroom full of other students, there are a lot of fun activities that can be done by your homeschooling student. Here are a four of my favorite sites for ideas and lesson plans. These sites are largely useful in the younger elementary grades, but several of the ideas could be adapted for use with older homeschooling students.

1. Valentine's Day Unit Study at A to Z Home's Cool Homeschooling. This page offers a lot of links and ideas, including arts and crafts, math, history and more. Be forewarned, however, that the page also makes mention of food said to have aphrodisiac qualities, so you may want to preview the links without your child present to determine which ideas work best for your homeschooling.

2. Valentine's Day Ideas for Moms. While not designed specifically for with homeschooling in mind, this is another site with several links and ideas. This one includes thoughts for Valentine's Day on a budget, coloring pages, book suggestions for younger kids and ideas for Valentine's Day cookies. It does mention a homeschooling lesson coming soon and so it may be worth some repeat visits.

3. Valentine Candy Count. This is a lesson plan idea that can be adapted to work out in a homeschooling setting just as well as in a traditional classroom. Though, you may not want to purchase as much candy, depending on how many children you're homeschooling. Personally, I'd try to add a little fun to my graphing, by using heart shaped stickers or stamps. Also, to add further practice to estimation, I'd ask my student to estimate the total number of candies after pouring them into a jar. This coud be fun with a group of chidren from a homeschooling support group as well.