Valentine Mailboxes and Note Writing Station

-Product for this post provided by Oriental Trading Company, this post contains affiliate links.-

Valentine's is a great time to focus on the people that we love, not only in a romantic type way but also the love we have for our family and friends. Lately in our house I feel like there has been more arguing and fighting than love and kindness. Someone is always seems looking at a sibling wrong or breathing their air. Sometimes the kids play well together and I know that they love each other but they get frustrated with each other over the dumbest things and the fighting was making me crazy. I decided that I wanted to try a little project to see if it would help them recognize the good things about each other instead of only focusing on the negative. 

I ordered everything we needed for this project from Oriental Trading Company, they have tons of Valentine stuff and I was able to find everything that I needed. I ordered paper mache mailboxes which came in a pack of 6, so just enough for each of the kids to have one. I also ordered some blank notecards, markers, a big pack of valentine stickers, some cute little pillow boxes, and a big bag of their favorite candy. 

Each week on Monday nights we have a family night and as part of that we have an activity. We rotate each week who is in charge of the activity and this week it happened to be my 4 year old daughter's turn. I explained to her what I wanted to do and she was really excited to help me plan the activity. That night we talked a little bit about love in our family, how we should treat the people that we love, and how that might be a little different than how we have been treating them. Then Maren helped me hand out a mailbox to each kid. 

We got out the markers and stickers and they each started to decorate thier mailboxes. You could make them a lot cuter by covering them with paper or using paint but I was trying to keep it as simple as possible. They had a blast decorating their mailboxes. My oldest son loves Star Wars and Percy Jackson so his box was covered with lightsabers and symbols of Greek gods. One of my girls loves owls so she drew owls on hers, another covered hers in as many colorful heart stickers as she could fit, and another only used blue because that is her favorite color.

We showed them the notecards, pillow boxes, and candy, and explained to them that over the next few weeks they should try to look for the good in each other and write each other notes, draw pictures, or give treats to their brothers and sisters. There was a giant bag of candy but they were not allowed to get any for themselves, only to give it to other people. I put all of the supplies in a basket and we set everything up on top of a cabinet in our living room. 

It took longer for them to decorate their boxes than I had planned and it was time for them to go to bed so I was starting to think that maybe my plan hadn't been so great after all. Then they started writing notes. My oldest son wrote the first note. He gave the note to his little sister who had helped me plan the activity and in it he said thiank you to her for planning such a fun activity for the family. He included one of the boxes and colored it blue because that is her favorite color with a Kit Kat inside because that is her favorite candy. He was so excited to put it in her mailbox and to watch her pull it out. All of the kids were excited to watch her open it and she absolutely loved getting it. As I watched that interaction take place I felt like having them up a little past bedtime was totally worth it. 

It has now been a couple of weeks between the time that we sat down to make the boxes and the time I am writing this post and the note writing has definitely lessened but they are still writing notes to each other. The first week or so there was a lot of notes and candy being given. Once the candy ran out it started to slow down. My goal with the project was to encourage them to look for the good in each other and acknowledge it and I think overall it was a success. It was cute to see how excited they got, not only for what was in their own mailbox but to see what the others got and to give things to others. I loves seeing a note saying "good luck in your game today" "Thank you for playing with me"  "good job playing basketball" or Happy Birthday cards on their brother's birthday. 

It was something that was pretty simple to put together, the kids did most of the work in decorating the mailboxes. All I really had to do was gather up the supplies. And it has been a lot of fun for our family and a great way to do nice things for other people in the family and encourage them to think of others instead of only themselves.