Valentines Day Gifts: Chocolate Fountain Ideas for Kids and Families

For the young couple, Valentine's Day is all about romance, but when your family grows, it becomes a fun time, as well, for reinforcing love for your children.  It doesn't require huge expenditures to acknowledge the day, and to make your children feel special, but it is nice when you can do something a little different, unexpected, and fun.  My parents always made it fun by providing specialty boxes of See's candies, and Valentine's cards that were a cute.  I like to pull out a fun activity here or there, and one of my favorites has been to open up a bag of valentine's day M&M's for the kids to sort and chart...being a homeschooling family, we have the luxury of planning thematic studies on special days! 

Whether your kids are enjoying the day with a classroom Valentines Day party, or whether it's a weekend occurence of the day, there are plenty of ways to make it a fun day.  This article will focus on ideas that include chocolate fountains in the fun.

At this writing, my tween daughter has just purchased a family Christmas gift at a local drugstore:  a mini chocolate fountain in red.  The price was within her budget, which was lowered by the store's offering of $ off coupons at the scanner in front (CVS).  It's really just a tempering pot/fondue pot type of device, with a tower which rotates to push the melted chocolate chips upward.  However, the bright red color is great for a Valentine's day theme.  If you are reading this article close to Valentine's Day, those special Christmas items have no doubt been moved out of the store.  However, keep this in mind, come next Christmas, and watch for these items and savings during the holidays, or after, with post-Christmas clearances. 

In the meantime, if you want to put these ideas to work this year, there are plenty of fountains in a range of prices.  Amazon is a great source for finding these.

If you want to do something on a larger scale, whether as class mom helping with a classroom Vday party, or as a youth group or Sunday school class leader, you may want something just a little more sturdy, or a larger fountain, and you may find the cost elusive:  party rental shops might provide a great alternative for a large scale valentine day project with kids.

The applications for using a chocolate fondue fountain to celebrate Valentine's Day are pretty obvious: Dipping of various types of pretzels, marshmallows, cookies, and fruits, using bamboo skewers, is the goal. With a single fountain, you will have to determine what you will use to dip into, whether chocolate, white chocolate, milk chocolate...you get the idea. As you browse Amazon, you will find plenty of these selections, and even caramel dipping sauces to use in your chocolate fountain.

In a classroom environment, it will be necessary to set limits, and establish control, because regardless of age, sugar affects the behavior of kids quickly. The same is true at home. Make this a fun end to the day, and after serving a healthy Valentines dinner, have a family chocolate fondue party.

For educators, this is a great springboard into a math lesson based on combinations: If there are 3 fountains and 10 dipping products (cookies, etc.), how many different ways could you choose to eat your goodies? Create a worksheet of such problems for kids to illustrate and answer! Make it educational, whether in the classroom, or at home. Create estimation problems based on predicted consumption. For example, if there are 32 kids in the classroom, how many packages of Oreos must be purchased for everyone to have 3 to dip in the fountains. Create volume and surface area problems, if you are brave enough. Or, give some example problems, and ask the students to write their own problems. Put those higher level thinking skills to work in the midst of your classroom activity.

For a language teacher, have the students do creative writing projects, authoring a short story or poem that involves a chocolate fall....Willie Wonka's chocolate factory is a springboard.

For the history teacher, study the history of chocolate, or the geography and economics related to chocolate.

For the PE teacher, determine what exercise is necessary to burn the calories consumed at a chocolate fondue party.

For the middle school team, put together a thematic study that spans the team classes, and culminate the day with the chocolate fondue celebration. Find a couple of generous sponsors, and draw for door prizes, with a couple of students taking home their own fountain or fondue pot. Or, have the team do a fundraiser ahead of time in order to fund the Valentine's Day project, selling donation drawing tickets, with a chocolate fountain, or chocolate gift basket as the prize.

Do be sure to take into account any food allergies, and work with affected students to provide an alternative.

Brain storm how you would put your fountain, or a rented fountain, to use in the classroom, and you may find yourself writing your own education themed hubs here at HubPages!

Chocolate fondue is a fun activity for family, kids, or students at any point in the year, and whether you try this at Valentine's Day, or later in the year, you can have a lot of fun, while provoking thought and reason at the same time! Find fountains and supplies at Sephra.