I’m a bit behind in sharing this book club event with you, but we had a great time exploring Jigsaw Jones’ Valentine Mystery together.
After discussing the book, we jumped right in to imitating it. We chose to make ransom note valentines, but we decided to make these to encourage others. We began by talking about abbreviations and language shortcuts, like ‘BFF’ for ‘best friends forever’ or ‘2’ for ‘to, too, two,’ and then they began. Armed with colorful paper, scissors, glue, and lots of magazines, the girls spent over an hour searching for just the right elements for their chosen messages. They really got into this!
Then it was time to celebrate this heart-shaped holiday with some Minute-to-Win-It style games. For the first challenge, the girls tried to stack candy hearts into the highest tower – Heart A-Stack. This turned out to be harder than it looked!
Next came the Heart Toss. Each girl stood back and tried to toss her candy hearts into small cups. My kitchen was soon covered in pastel hearts – and the giggling began.
I couldn’t get a clear shot of this game – nobody could hold still! Each girl licked her heart and stuck it right between her eyes, and then tried to wiggle her face and get the heart into her mouth. One girl managed to do it! Giggles were out in full force for this one – and afterwards, each time someone spied some leftover sugar still attached to a forehead.
This Chinese-style challenge really divided our group. It became very clear who loves to eat with chopsticks as the girls used either pencils or chopsticks to pick up the hearts and transfer them to their plates.
We had to make a simple snack, too, so we went with love bark. We melted some white chocolate, spread it on waxed paper, and stuck in some clean candy hearts.
In the end, we celebrated with some pink-and-purple snacks. The girls made floats with lemon-lime soda and raspberry sherbet and had fun drinking them out of colorful goblets. They munched on cookie bars with white chocolate chips and pink-and-purple sprinkles.
My Big Helper loves the color scheme of this holiday, and she had fun sharing it with her best friends.
What’s your favorite holiday book?
