School Valentines

We love valentines at our house. The kids and I have a great time looking at all the different card designs at the stores. My kids love picking out their own candy to attach to their cards to give to friends and their teacher. I remember feeling quite surprised last year when the checker told me my balance and all we had bought was valentines to give away. It bugs me that most of the boxed valentines only has 18-24 pieces. All of my kids classes have 25-30 kids in it meaning I get to buy 2 boxes of valentines and sometimes 2 bags of candy for each child. That add's up really quick! Wanting to do things a little different and cheaper yet still fun the kids and I searched Pinterest for many day's before we made our trip to the city. Brayden fell in love with the bouncy ball valentine. What little kids doesn't like their own bouncy ball?  

 His card we were able to print off on our home computer for free says, "Valentine, you make my heart BOUNCE." I was able to buy the bouncy balls at Wal Mart in their valentine section. They came in little packages of 6/$1. Being he goes to school 4 days a week he got to have a Valentine Party two days in a row. It also meant he needed to bring 36 valentines. His valentine cost me $5 this year. Definitely cheaper than two boxes of valentines and all the candy to match.

Emily loves making Kool-Aid. It's something she can make all by herself with out any help! 

She was so excited to find this idea on Pinterest. We bought our silly straws at the dollar store for 6/$1 and found packages of Kool-Aid for 10/$1. It cost me less than $8 which is probably about the same amount I would have spent on candy and cards for her class but these turned out so much cuter. I'd like to say this way had less sugar but knowing Kool-Aid calls for a whole cup of it I'm sure it wasn't. It does make me feel better knowing the straws will last a bit longer than all the candy they received. She's a little OCD like her mom and wanted to match up the color of her straw with her package of Kool-Aid. That's my girl!

 Madelyn's was by far the cheapest valentine. I bought a package of 300 glow sticks really cheap on Amazon about a year ago. We used them at all of our Family Reunion's last summer and a few here and there through out the year. I'm glad she remembered I still had some as I had forgotten.

Thanks to Pinterest again we found some free printables for the tags. It says, "You make my heart glow." She was thrilled with the response she got from them at school from her friends. They all loved it!

Hunter and Emily are very similar in personality. Hunter really didn't care what he did but he thought the saying for the glow sticks was to girly so went with Emily's idea. Being it's usually one of these two kids always asking to make Kool-Aid it fit him to a tee! Apparently the kids in his class thought it was pretty cool and was able to talk their teacher into letting them use their straws at lunch that day. He was pretty stoked! Hunter's class had some kids move away recently and he's down to 20 kids, the smallest in the school. It cost me about $5 for all of his valentine's.

I spend a lot of time at the kids school. I know their teacher's and aide's very well. I know that most of their teacher's pass the candy given to them out to their grand kids or just throw it away. I wanted to give something that the teacher's would benefit from. About a year in a half ago I came across a pretty good deal on the internet. Staples had an online sale of their Clorox wipes. These are the smaller canisters that only holds about 100 but they were less than a dollar a piece, around $.70! I ended up ordering a case of them and to sweeten the deal it was free shipping too. Kory bought me a really nice steam cleaner recently and I just don't use the Clorox wipes like I use to.  Having an overabundance we gave each teacher and aide a Clorox with a helping hand to go along with it. I have been thanked by many of them for a great gift that wasn't sweets and something that they can and will use. 

I wan't sure how the kids would like passing out valentines with no candy but it didn't seem to bother them. They each loved what they gave and want to do it again next year. I think we had great success!