Have Fun with Romantic Idioms

The American lexicon is filled with similes, metaphors, and idioms about love and all things love-related. In this fun creative writing and drawing activity, your child can pick a few of his favorite love sayings to illustrate and even make up a few of his own. Compiled into a handmade book, this craft makes the perfect clever and unique Valentine's Day gift for that special linguist in your child's life.

What You Need:

• A handful of love and relationship idioms such as: "head over heels", "falling in love", "tie the knot", "you're the apple of my eye", etc.
• Paper
• Colored markers
• Stapler

What You Do:

1. Have your child pick a few love idioms and think about them. What do they mean? How and why did they come about?
2. Have him brainstorm several new idioms of his own. There’s no right or wrong way to do it—just let your child have fun with it.
3. Now it's time to draw: ask your child to draw literal interpretations of the sayings he picked in step 1. For instance, an illustration of "to fall in love" might show a person losing his balance and falling against giant block letters that spell the word "love".
4. Have him draw one illustration for each idiom he picked. If he likes, he can even illustrate his own made-up idioms.
5. Once the illustrations are done, staple the pages together into a book. Have your child make a cover for his book and give it a fun title such as "Love at First Sight: An Illustrated Book of Romantic Colloquialisms" or something similar.

Your book of colloquialisms will make a unique Valentine’s Day gift for that special someone.