I ❤ February, don't you? The days are starting to get a little longer; the promise of spring is in the air and in the garden. Bulbs are sending up green shoots, their fingers tentatively checking that it's safe to come out before displaying their glorious colours to a waiting world. While you're waiting, get ahead with planning with Let's Explore Daffodils Project Lapbook ❤

February is the month of Valentine's Day, a day to celebrate love and matters of the heart. Legend has it that St Valentine was a bishop in Rome who disobeyed the Emperor's new law that prohibited marriage. Emperor Claudius II had this bright idea that men would make better soldiers if they weren't distracted by wife and family. Brave Valentine was having none of it, so he continued to perform marriages, but in secret. Sadly, he was eventually caught and thrown in prison. Whilst he was in there, he cured the prison guard's blind daughter, Julia.  Valentine and Julia became friends and then fell in love with each other. On the night before his execution on February 14th 270AD, he sent her a final letter signed "From Your Valentine" ❤

Since the Middle Ages, the feast day has been traditionally associated with romantic love, but nowadays, you can now find lots of activities online that celebrate familial and spiritual love too. In fact, I've collected some ideas together on a Valentine's Day Pinterest board for you to explore with your children ❤

This woven heart-shaped craft from First Palette is one of my favourites. I tried it with my Sunday school class and it proved a little tricky for younger children, so they simply wove the strips under and over each other to make a flat heart-shaped decoration instead. We glued the ends of the strips together to stop the heart from falling apart. Some children then glued it on to the front of a card; others threaded a loop of cotton through the top to hang it ❤
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If you have older kids who have mastered the instructions, maybe you could set them the challenge of making baskets of different sizes so that they have to work out how to make the template for themselves ❤

If you want to tie some science in with Valentine's Day, it's worth bearing in mind that February is also National Heart Month here in the UK. The perfect opportunity to look at the biology of the heart. You'll find lots of hands-on ideas, videos and printables on the Circulatory System section of my Human Body Pinterest board. There's something for all ages, so please pop over and have a look ❤

What's your favourite thing about February?