Lots of the valentines now seem to come with a pencil or tattoo or something that goes right in, so that eliminates the need to tape in candy. The candy drives me nuts. I feel like it is expected now, where when I was a kid maybe only like a quarter of kids in the class would give out candy with their valentines. But the things that come prepackaged are awesome.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Every year, for two kids now, I have spent the days leading up to Valentines buying cards, making cards, making lists, taping candy.... I HATE it. I could understand when they where little, learning to write, learning to spell, but my child is in fifth grade. Please let it stop!

Come on, OP. You don't hate it. Perhaps it gives you a sense of being busy to say you just have to take on this project, for your child that's damn near a teenager.

This. Really. The vast majority of parents of fifth graders need only take their kid to the store. Hell, my first grader didn’t even need my help this year.

Your 5th grader can and should do it themselves, or else just don't do it.

You are creating issues.

You will miss it when your kids are older. I have High Schoolers now and they don't care anymore about V Day. Makes me miss those sweet tender years where it made them so happy to make a card or a box.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Every year, for two kids now, I have spent the days leading up to Valentines buying cards, making cards, making lists, taping candy.... I HATE it. I could understand when they where little, learning to write, learning to spell, but my child is in fifth grade. Please let it stop!

Come on, OP. You don't hate it. Perhaps it gives you a sense of being busy to say you just have to take on this project, for your child that's damn near a teenager.

This.
If you hated it so badly, you wouldn't be doing it. Does your child not know how to cut, glue, write, tape? I'm not understanding why you are involved other than buying the stuff.

Here's something that will blow your mind. My 5 year old didn't feel like doing them so I did them for her and it took me 5 minutes.

My 8 year old was into it this year and I did nothing but them hand over to him.

Have the kid do it if they're into it and it's fun for them and if they're not into it, do it yourself. If they are complaining, don't make them do it. No one cares.

My first-grader did everything except buy the cards and print out the class list. If she wanted to make cards rather than buy them, she could do that, but I'm sure not going to.

?? My 1st and 3rd graders did it all themselves this year, and they are hardly crafty. Just get a box from target and call it a day!

Wtf? Theyvaell ones you literally write a name I . Self created issue. And why isn’t your kid doing this? My second grader did his with no help.

I buy packages of cards--there's no way we'd have time to hand make 22 cards. My 7yo did them herself with some supervision to make sure she finished them and didn't miss anyone on the list.

My 4yo writes his name and I write his classmates names. His had no assembly this year, but I would have done it if so.

We split it over 2 nights so there was less complaining.

This is the first year my 3rd grader is not having any type of Valentine's celebration in his class =/ If he did, all I would have done was buy the cards and a food item. He would have done the signing and taping.

My kid is 4. I spell the names of her classmates for her. She does the rest. At the end, I write the names of the classmates in small print in the corner, in case the teacher can’t read her writing to distribute.

Do most schools still do this? we are likely changing schools and I really hope our next school does not celebrate Valentine's Day.

Yes I hated it and loved it when middle school rolled around so no more decorative boxes. My kids are artsy and love to build things. They LOVED making the boxes and it was always some over the top sculpture that defied gravity. They did it themselves but every year it was battle to get them to go to bed, stop obsessing about it and the kitchen was a mess with glue, string, scraps, wood, metal, cut up plastic plates ,paper mache, clay, paint, you name it everywhere. One year DD made two different ones because she couldn't decide.

Anonymous wrote:You are doing it wrong. My 4 yo does everything herself and make very fancy cards. Buy card stock, let them cut, glue gems, stickers, etc. she has her class list and handles the whole thing. She is super proud.

Same, when my kid was that age. I got fancy cards from places like Paper Source in downtown Bethesda, and spent a good while getting cards ready with my 4yo. It was cute. I spelled out the names, but she did a lot of it.

Fast forward three years: I stopped by Giant the other day for something else and remembered to grab a couple random boxes of VDay cards on the way out. My 7yo has worked on them a couple evenings this week, taping lollipops and tattoos to cards by herself. I have not even supervised (busy getting dinner ready after work), other than to have her clean up after she's done.