On 14 February people speak of love in all its forms, and we chose to celebrate the one closest to us: the love for our children.
On Saturday and again on Monday we expressed those feelings in the PlusKids educational workshops.
A workshop about feelings has a more serious point than it might appear. At primary-school age children feel everything, but they do not always have the words. "I am glad", "I miss you", "I am sorry", "I care about you" are phrases many of them use for the first time only when asked to write them down or say them to someone in particular. A workshop gives them exactly that occasion, in a setting where nobody laughs.
Then there is the part about making something for someone else. When a child makes a gift, they have to think about the person who will receive it: what she likes, which colour she would choose, what she would enjoy reading. It is the first, very concrete step from "what I want" towards "what she would like", and at this age it is a shift of perspective worth practising at every opportunity.
We closed the two days with our hands full of work and the room full of good cheer. That is roughly what love looks like at after school.