Which Causes Less Grief??-- Valentines

Omg, no! We have always sent O. variety for the entire class.

My son doesn't care a rip if he gets a Hello Kitty valentine--he's all about the candy! Lol

I used to teach kindergarten and the kids never brought in "separate" valentines. They usually picked out something that was THEIR gender - girls brought princess valentines and boys brought superheroes - and they gave those to each classmate (boy AND girl). No one thought anything of it...

We don't have a classroom because we home school but my kids get them to give to their friends and family. We have a lot of kids in the neighborhood that are all friends. My kids also give them to cousins, grandparents etc.
But still...One kid, one box. They pick what they are into and give them to everyone.
My son would be over the moon with a Hello Kitty pencil! He loves her ;)
Gender-specific is so silly IMO.

My daughter loves star wars. Just thought Id throw that out there. When I was in school, aside from having to watch out for roaming dinosaurs when we were walking there, I dont remember buying separate boy / girl valentines. Is that expected now? I would just let my dd pick the ones she likes and give them out to everyone, shes not in school yet tho.

My DD will have one pack and that's that. The preschool just asks us to sign them but not address them and when SD was little she did address each one. I think kids who get hives over receiving a gender-specific card from another child are overthinking it. It's the issue of that mom and her kid, not yours.

Our daughter just picked the pack she liked and then went from there.. The kids did not care about the cards.. they card about how many they got..

She usually included stickers.. and Horrors, they were not even Valentine stickers!!!

My son is in preschool and we picked them out yesterday. I said pick whichever box you want (there were 32 per box - more than what we needed)..first he had Star Wars but changed his mind to Madagascar 3. If he would have stayed with Star Wars, then all of the girls in his class would have received a Star Wars valentine. His box came with temporary tattoos of the animal characters. I am not going to add anything else with the Valentine but we are taking in items for their party. We are filling in the "To" this year. His teacher sent a list of names home last week so I believe that is her intent for the class. I think at this age, they are probably viewing it as good opportunity to practice their writing since they will be writing everyone else's name instead of just their own :-)

I will absolutely give the same valentines regardless of the gender. I have never seen a boy get excessively upset about getting a girlie valentine or vice versa. You'll make yourself crazy trying to coordinate two sets of valentines AND you'll be enforcing a gender bias when you shouldn't.

are you serious? OMG....we never, ever picked for each sex! My sons picked what they liked. In fact, they expected girly ones from the girls!

Why not address them? I remember being little I always got the horse or dog valentine cards and I would sort them out in order of my favorite picture to my least favorite picture and then address them in order of my favorite people in my class to my least favorite people. Lol

I have always let my kids get the valentines they liked and moved on. Sometimes I got "gender neutral" like the Skittles that you put a "to & from" sticker on or The Lorax but my son normally got cars or Power Rangers and my daughter often gets princesses or Barbie. My kids have always addressed the Valentines (yes, even in Pre-K because they recognized each other's names).

Your friend sounds like my sister (and my nephew)...it's fine for my daughter to go to Star Wars and Ninjango parties and participate but heaven forbid he do a mermaid craft at her party! It's quite common though for girls to be able to play with "boy" toys but it's not typically accepted for boys to play with "girl" toys.

I let the boys pick out whichever valentines they like and they get handed out to everyone. I don't worry about gender, I have never even heard of anyone buying separate valentines for different genders. We do write the names of the kids classmates on the valentines on the envelopes, the kids teachers always send home lists of the kids names so that we can get them all spelled right and ensure that we don't miss anyone. As far as ensuring that a treat is included, if something is included in the package great, if not I don't worry about it.

I have never ever heard of doing this. Even from when I was a small child, I picked out the valentines I wanted and gave everyone the same.

The biggest grief I deal with now with my own kids is what candy/treat MUST accompany the valentine. Ugh!

I wanted to buy a variety pack of some pretty cool valentines for my 5 year old son, but realized that cost more than just a pack that were all the same design (24 cards in each, though). So I had him pick just one out of the six designs. He chose "Valentine, you are out of this world" with a robot on it. A girl robot with little hearts and such on her. And I bet he will love handing them out.

I'm with OneAndDone, I bet most young kids don't notice the design or anything unless it is way cool, ESPECIALLY if it has candy.

(My apologies to this year's class - you're only getting the robot card, no candy.)

They choose what valentines they want to hand out I don't allow them to get a pack for girls and another for boys they don't care about that they just like giving them & receiveing them & read what it has on them if they get candies great if not no big deal.Names no we don't write individual names on them the class party with 24 or so kids don't have time to read the names to assure they get properly placed in the classmates box so we write pal & their from name

My sons receive "girl" valentines every year and have never thought anything of it. They give "boy" valentines and I assume that the girls have no issues getting Star Wars and Spiderman cards. Just pick one pack for each of your children. Their classmates won't care.

whaaa-??

i have never heard of buying multiple boxes of valentines. heck no! that mom is insane.

why don't we just LOOK for ways to indulge and entitle our kids? good grief!

and actually, i'm kind of a nazi mom about the candy - i KNOW he will get a TON, so i kinda have an unspoken "no candy" rule on ours. just because they are #1 usually a little more expensive, and #2, totally unnecessary with all the tons of sugar they'll be getting these days. i make up for it by making sure to shop early and get EXACTLY the kind he wants. spiderman, this year :) (sorry girls! lol!)

Oh heck no.

I have a daughter and a son.
They each chose the Valentine boxes they wanted and that's what everyone got. My daughter chose cute and girly, my son chose superheroes. Boys and girls alike got whatever they had chosen.
It was never a problem.
I usually bought little candy hearts, sweettart flavored, that didn't have any messages on them and they put one in each envelope.
The teacher gave us a list of kids names and my kids wrote the names on the envelopes and simply signed their own names. Sometimes the teachers would simply give a number of the children in class so my kids signed and all the kids got the same thing. That way was actually much easier, the cards were easily distributed.

In Kindergarten, let's face it. Boys are going to get "girl" themed valentines from girls, and girls are going to get "boy" themed valentines from boys. It's the way it works.

My kids never bought two sets for boys and girls.
None of the other parents did either.
It was never an issue.

The mom who indulges her son in the belief that he will have to go to the doctor over cooties is way out of whack and off base, in my opinion.

That's all I will kindly say about that matter.

If you want to get pencils for the class, you can get them at the dollar store. They come in metallic and all types of colors. They also have great eraser packs. I always gave erasers for different things at my kids' schools.

Let your kids pick their valentines and sign them. Not all come with envelopes these days. You can tape a pencil on the back.

More than good enough.

Just my opinion. Best wishes.

hee! i'm just astounded at the issues parents make up any more!
when my kids were little we sent in valentines of whatever my kids were into at the moment and picked out. teenage mutant ninja turtles were a favorite.
i just can't wrap my mind around parents agonizing over 'girl' and 'boy' valentines.
they just signed their names on the back and gave them to everybody in the classroom. no addressing.
i'd never survive having a child in public school today.
:) khairete
S.

I never had thought about doing that until last year when my 6 year old wanted to give different ones for boys and girls. That was on her though. All the other kids in her class seemed to give whatever theme they chose and I tried to point that out to her. This year she picked a gender neutral theme. She is so silly and does worry about that kind of stuff! My other daughter (Kindergartner) is giving out My Little Pony. I'm sure there are some boys that won't be fond of the that one or the tattoo that comes with it...but oh well. :)

Also, it depends on the classroom, teacher and child on how they want them filled out. I know that I've had teachers request they don't put names on them. But I've also had teachers request they do so they get better at recognizing each others name for practice. My 2nd grader will probably fill hers out with the classroom names however my Kindergartner's teacher asked for the "To:" to be blank.

I definitely won't give you a hard time for asking, that's what a forum is for. I find most people just have their kids give the same theme whether for a a boy or girl.

My kids always picked one store-bought type and stuck with it. The same goes for all the other kids in their classes. Generally the boys pick something boy-like and the girls get something pink. Or some kids made their valentines.

This year will be a little different. Only one of my kids is young enough for classroom valentines. I have a bag of random leftovers from the past several years, so he is going to use those. Star Wars, kitties & puppies, Batman, random animals, Disney...all sorts.

They do write TO on them, as well as From. The teachers even specifically say that the child (not the parent) should do all the writing, for practice. For little kids, using To names also helps with reading during the distribution.

If that one mom has a gender problem, it would be sad because kids learn that nonsense from their parents. She may have been kidding though.

My kids pick the ones they like and thats what they give out. We have never even considered doing boys and girls separately. I think its silly!

We don't address it to each child---just sign their names.

We ended up buying girl and boy valentines this year. The reason this happened is because the store didn't have any packages large enough to cover the whole class so we had to buy two anyway.

What? We never bought gender specific. In fact, my daughter would ALWAYS pick out spiderman or transformers, etc for ALL the kids in the class. It never even crossed my mind to buy 2 boxes, one for boys, one for girls. And we addressed them, the teacher would send home a list of all the kids in class and we would sit down and fill them all out. I mean really, how fun is it to just shove one in a kids box? I thought picking out a special one for each of your friends was the fun part. To this day (and I'm 45), I remember in 4th grade getting a poodle valentine that said, "be mine" and it was signed, "secret admirer". I never knew who gave it to me, but I remember being so excited. lol! I guess times have changed. How sad that you can't even fill them out with your classmates names. :(

Maybe I'm insane too. I've let my kids get two boxes each so they can give girl ones to the girls and boy one to the boys. My 4th and 2nd grader opted to go with the candy ones this year, so one package for each. My K son decided if he gave the girls WWE cards they would cry and the boys wouldn't live Brave. Argh. It's not really too big of a deal to me and if it makes my kids happy, so be it.

I was the crazy mom who got a list of names of who is in the class room and gave boys the boys cards and girls the girl cards. Yes I did.

Just remember the teacher and the enrichment (Music, Art, PE) teachers and don't sweat the small stuff.