Valentine's Day at school?

[inkstainedwretch]

I'm from Canada and this is the first year we've had a child in school here (my older daughter is in Reception) so I don't know how things are done. Do children give each other Valentine's cards? Or something else? Nothing? If cards, where do you find bulk packs of children's Valentine's cards? Does such a thing exist?

[Littlefish]

I've never known anyone give cards to the whole class. Valentines day isn't a big deal over here.

[inkstainedwretch]

Really? Ok, that makes my life easier!

[SapphireMoon]

Not a big deal here at all for primary.
You can relax and do nothing!

[Innogen]

Nah we basically ignore valentines day.

Only loved up couples bother, and that won't happen until secondary school - hopefully!

[Kaekae]

No...and we ignore it too!

[17leftfeet]

Dd got a card when she was 9 and a few of them bother in the last yr of primary but its really not a big deal

[souperb]

An American girl gave them out to everyone in DS's reception class a few years ago. He was Absolutely Horrified as were most of the boys. The girls were just baffled.

[lljkk]

Do north American kids still give a V-card to almost everyone in the class nowadays? That is so sweet :). The only equivalent here is Xmas card giving. Do Canadians celebrate St. Patrick's like American kids? Coz that one is another non-event in most of England, you'll find.

I dunno if things have changed, but Valentine's British style is downright peculiar. You're supposed to give a completely anonymous card and only to someone you totally fancy. The cards in shops are almost all mushy or rude or both.

[inkstainedwretch]

I didn't know kids here would give out Christmas cards to everyone! I felt bad my daughter didn't give any out. In Canada, however, everyone gives out Valentine's cards. Guess it's the opposite here.

Canadians, incidentally, don't generally make a big deal out of St. Patrick's except that more people than usual wear green. And if you're a student, you drink green beer, maybe. I never did.

[lljkk]

well, it's like V-day, the unpopular kids get far fewer Xmas cards of course. But a few kids will give a card to everyone in the class.

I have NO IDEA where people buy the usual small Xmas cards for kids to give out. ASDA, maybe? Nowhere around here!

Have you, er, encountered British Halloween yet? That's another interesting one!

[pyrrah]

When DD was at a Primary nursery, we were given a sheet with the whole class on it which made it simple to do xmas cards for everyone - supermarkets do handy boxes of 30 which I presume are designed for the purpose.

In Reception at the new Primary we didn't get the list of names so DD gave cards to the kids whose names she could remember!

It's worth checking what the school's protocols are on birthdays: cake at school/party bags/party invitations etc. Some schools will put invitations in bookbags, but some only if every child in the class is invited or every child of one gender (nightmare if you work and don't ever meet any of the other mothers at the school gate).

Otherwise, all other holidays can be safely ignored.

[pyrrah]

lljkk - Tesco do the boxes of 30. There's normally a choice of about 5 different sets. They're shaped like cubes and cost about £2.

[inkstainedwretch]

Thank you so much, Pyrrah! Very useful information! And lljkk, British Halloween was a bit sadly lacking from my point of view too. Still fun, but eh... seems like English people just don't go all out for holidays in general. Anybody have input as to why?

[NotCitrus]

We have Christmas and New Year, which expands to fill holiday needs for most of the year. Add Easter and Guy Fawkes and summer holidays, and it's not so bad.

I figure America celebrates more random days (not holidays in Brit-speak if you don't get time off) due to the lack of actual holiday time - 2 weeks as opposed to 4 plus bank holidays here.

[pyrrah]

The 5th November - Guy Fawkes Night - is our big celebration outside of Xmas, coming so close to Halloween we tend to concentrate on the former.

Since I was tiny I've always done pumpkin lanterns, but that was about it. Certainly the shops have a lot more Halloween crap these days than there used to be.

Easter is also fairly well celebrated in the UK - mainly as a chocolate festival rather than a religious one though!

Valentines Day is a horrible festival imo. Designed to make the unhappily single, the recently bereaved and the unpopular kids at school feel even worse than usual and an excuse for florists, confectioners and restaurants to quadruple their prices. DH and I have never celebrated it and neither did our families.

Mother's Day and Father's Day are relatively newly popular. Mothering Sunday was the original celebration and has since morphed into Mother's Day. Father's Day was probably a result of companies realising that they could sell a shed load of daddy crap as a result of seeing the tills ker-ching at Mother's Day time.

I suppose we've either a grumpy lot - or perhaps don't need set dates to celebrate on!

[ExitPursuedTheRoyalPrude]

[pyrrah]

Oh dear... what did I say

[ExitPursuedTheRoyalPrude]

That was to OP.

[kilmuir]

Too commercial and nonsense.............yes bah humbug

[inkstainedwretch]

Oh dear... what did I say?

Honestly, I don't care for Valentine's Day as an adult thing. DH and I never celebrate it, in part because his birthday is a few days before and our anniversary is a week later. For kids, however, I thought it was fun to exchange cards and do heart/red/pink crafts. When I was growing up all the kids brought valentines for all the other kids so it was never a matter of popularity. The underlying message, at least in primary school, wasn't about lovey dovey, it was about valuing friendship and valentines for parents meant the kid loved the parents.

I think Guy Fawkes night is great -- but dressing up for Halloween is more fun IMO. And I also enjoy Easter purely as an excuse to eat chocolate.

Just to be clear, what's the difference between Mother's Day and Mothering Sunday? When are they? And when's Father's Day? Am I correct in surmising that Mother's Day is in March here? (It's in May in Canada.)

[inkstainedwretch]

By the way, we don't say V-card for valentine cards! Giving away your V-card means something rather different in Canada... and it's something you can only do once. ;-)

[PolkadotsAndMoonbeams]

Mothering Sunday is the fourth Sunday in Lent, so it's late this year (30th March). It was originally so you could go back to your 'mother' church, but it got mixed up with the American mother's day tradition (which I think somebody campaigned for in the early 1900's?), so we've kept the date but use it to celebrate mothers.

Father's day is always the third Sunday in June.