Enjoy a St. Valentine Potluck Picnic and Nature Walk with a FREE St. Valentine Nature Scavenger Hunt Printable!

It is said that St. Valentine was a priest and doctor who, at one point, had a young, blind girl under his care. It is also said that St Valentine would take the girl on long walks where they would pick flowers for her to smell.

Taking a cue from their walks, a nature walk with those you care about seems an ideal way to celebrate part of St. Valentine's Day.

That is just what my children, some friends, and I enjoyed last year on Valentine's Day: a St. Valentine Potluck Picnic and Walk and using a St. Valentine Nature Walk printable that I had whipped up and am sharing now here.

Enjoy a St. Valentine Potluck Picnic!

With a traditional theme of love, it is easy peasy to whip up a wide variety of snacks and dishes to share at a St. Valentine picnic as this sampling from our picnic demonstrates:

Juice Wiggler Hearts

Gluten Free Muffins with Gummy Ducks (since one of St. Valentine's symbols is birds)

Probiotic Gummy Ducks (since one of St. Valentine's symbols is birds)

Beet Puffs (Red for Love)

Tofu Hearts Filled with Heart-Healthy Vegetables

Clementine Hearts

Black Rice with Tofu Hearts

Seaweed Snack Hearts

Learn about St. Valentine with a Nature Scavenger Hunt!

You can also enjoy a St. Valentine Nature Scavenger Hunt using the FREE printable here.

On it, kids can sketch what they find, check things off as they take photos of them, or write notes about what they find.

Ideas for things that can be searched for and discussed are:

• something that offers comfort: In 3rd such Rome, Emperor Claudius II persecuted Christians. It is said that St. Valentine and St. Marius comforted fellow Christians during the persecutions.

Checking out roots.

• an interesting root: As a doctor in the 3rd century, St. Valentine likely made medicines by pounding and grinding roots and other natural things.

• an herb or edible plants: St. Valentine was a doctor and priest. He likely made poultices using herbs and plant matter.

Entwined Things.

More Entwined Things

• two entwined things: In the 3rd century, Emperor Claudius II wanted to increase his troops. He believed single men made better soldiers than married ones, so we forbade young men to marry. St. Valentine defied Claudius edict and encouraged young couples to come to him in secret to be joined in the sacrament of marriage.

Snow can be converted into water, the kids said.

• something that can be converted: After St. Valentine was arrested for illegally marrying couples, he is said to have been brought before Claudius, who was impressed by him. Claudius attempted to convert St. Valentine to Roman Paganism, but, instead, St. Valentine attempted to convert Claudius to Christianity.

This cool pattern frozen into the ice made the kids think that you could "write" messages on ice.

• something you could write a message on: When imprisoned, St. Valentine was said to be tended by a jailer, Asterius, and his blind daughter, who was very kind to St. Valentine, bringing him food and messages. St. Valentine and the girl developed a friendship and, toward the end of his imprisonment, Valentine was able to convert both her and her father to Christianity.

A tree growing around a wheel sure seemed interesting!

• something beautiful or interesting to look at: It is said that Asterius’ daughter was blind and St. Valentine miraculously restored her sight.

It's a heart!

• something with a heart-shaped: It is said that before his execution St. Valentine wrote a farewell message to Asterius’ daughter to thank her for her friendship and encourage her in her love for Christ and that he signed the message affectionately "From Your Valentine.” This phrase lives on even today. 

 
On the nature hunt printable, there is also a "free space" for St. Valentine, whose patronage includes affianced couples, against fainting, bee keepers, betrothed couples, engaged couples, epilepsy, fainting, greeting card manufacturers, greetings, happy marriages, love, lovers, plague, travelers, and young people.

Symbols for him include birds, roses, a bishop with a crippled or epileptic child at his feet, a bishop with a rooster nearby, a bishop refusing to adore an idol, a bishop being beheaded, a priest bearing a sword, a priest holding a sun, and a priest giving sight to a blind girl.

St. Valentine was executed on February 14th, 273 AD in Rome and the valentine has become the universal symbol of friendship and affection shared on each anniversary of the priest's execution -- St. Valentine's Day.

Take Time to Explore!

Of course, part of the fun and blessing of a Potluck Picnic and Nature Walk on St. Valentine's Day is simply being with those you love and care about and letting explorations take you where they will.  

Here are some snapshots of the fun we had exploring.

It truly was a blessed and beautiful St. Valentine celebration!

I pray with our FREE printable and inspiration from the snapshots and explanations here, you might enjoy a similarly blessed and beautiful time.

You can find other nature study, outdoor ideas, and free printables here, too.

If you go on a St. Valentine's Day Nature Scavenger Hunt we'd delight in hearing about it or seeing your snapshots. We also always welcome your ideas for living the liturgical year with children - especially outside, so, please, share here or on our Training Happy Hearts Facebook page.



St. Valentine, pray for us!

Pass Forward Love with Love Bucket {FREE Printable!}

Saint Valentine's Day has just passed and Lent is around the corner. Thus, many of us are thinking about love as well as praying, fasting, and giving.  That makes now a great time for gifting forward a little kindness and fun with a Love Bucket!

I found the idea of love buckets at Shauna and Co when I was planning activities for a local homeschool gathering in honor of Saint Valentine.  Right away, I knew I wanted to adapt the idea for our celebration. 

Since my children already love egging people and playing St. Nicholas for neighbors, I had no doubt that they'd delight in a new St. Valentine's Day-into-Lent tradition of "love bucketing" others.  So, it was I penned two poems so we could begin the tradition by making Love Buckets with friend so secretly gift to others.

{Disclosure: Some links which follow are affiliate ones.  Should you click through them and make any purchase we may receive compensation.  Anything we make goes straight back to training happy hearts and sharing about it here.}

Since I had already planned to take a picture walk through Saint Valentine (Tompert) at our party and to read Saint Valentine (Sabuda), I wrote one poem to harken back to those stories.

Since I also planned to share a perennial favorite, Somebody Love You, Mr. Hatch, I wrote a second poem related to that story.

This poem, especially, I think can be used as for anytime of year Love Bucket to share a random act of kindness, Work of Mercy, or Lenten giving mini-mission.

As you can see, I typed each poem up in a variety of fonts.  I, then, printed enough of the poems so that the children at our party could choose one version they liked, cut it out with fancy scissors, glue it to cardstock, and decorate it as a bucket tag to put on some inexpensive lidded buckets a friend found for us.

I meant to laminate the children's decorated tags so that the tags would be durable through much of love bucketing passed forward, but, unfortunately, when I had packed all the supplies for the party in my minivan, I had forgotten my laminator.  So, I simply had the children hole punch their cardstock tags and tie them with ribbon to their buckets.
 

The children then were encouraged to bring their buckets home, fill them with treats and decide who to "love bucket".

My children could not wait to do that and are so excited to add this random (and secretive) act of kindness to our annual traditions.  If yours would be, too, please  feel free to use a FREE PRINTABLE of the Love Bucket poems I wrote as you and yours  make your own love buckets to pass forward.

I'd be delighted to hear about your "love bucketing" fun!