Valentine’s Day in the classroom is a lot. Do you survive? Are your kids CRAZY?! Do you get tons of hugs? I don’t like this holiday at all, but I love seeing my kids express so much love! But boy, I am always glad it’s over. My feet always hurt. My stomach hurts from the 60 cupcakes that we have. People, literally 60 cupcakes. We will still have cupcakes and cookies for days and days!! I want to share some ideas, activities, and freebies to make Valentine’s Day in your classroom a little easier.
We use our LED lights to set the stage for a day of partying and a day of love! Definitely not required but it adds some fun to the day!
We kick off our day with our morning meeting and share things we love! You can also share things that are red or pink!
Valentine’s Day Literacy
Here are some more ideas for The Day It Rained Hearts:
After reading the story we retell using sequence words!
And then we share what makes us cranky! And ya’ll! These always crack me up!
Valentine’s Day Phonics Idea
Here’s a fun way to bring in the idea of “raining hearts” to practice phonics skills. Write words (or any math or literacy skill!) on paper hearts. CVC words, CVC-E words, etc. Put the hearts in an umbrella. Hold the umbrella up so the hearts rain down on the kids. They grab a heart and decode the word!
We also make a bouquet of sight words to practice our sight words. These monthly sight word projects have become a huge hit in our class! The kids love them, and the teacher loves the assessment piece of them!
The students come to my table 1 on 1, and we go through all of the sight words we have learned so far. They can read them automatically or decode the words! I mark the rose for each word they read. Then they color and cut them out and make a bouquet of sight words!
Valentine’s Day Math
To practice addition and subtraction, we use these
fake roses and play Cupid! We put numbers on paper plates and placed the plates on the floor. Students toss two roses onto the plates. They use the two numbers to write an addition or subtraction equation on their whiteboard! This can be modified for counting, letters, sounds, etc.
We measure ourselves to see how many “kisses” tall we are!
We also measure how many hearts tall we are using our Measure It Up creation!
Candy Heart Graphing
Sorting and graphing candy hearts is a Valentine’s Day in the-classroom requirement! I pour two or three bags of hearts into a bowl and kids grab a handful. They sort, graph, count, and analyze the data before eating the hearts!
Valentine’s Day Science And STEM
Here is a fun Valentine’s Day STEM project! We used toothpicks and jelly hearts to see who could build the tallest tower! This makes a great Valentine’s Day party activity and is great for language development and problem-solving!
Another easy STEM idea is stacking candy hearts! You can also do this as a minute-to-win game and see how many hearts we can stack in 1 minute!
Valentine’s Day Art Ideas
My favorite heart project is this marble-painted heart! We use shaving cream and tempera paint! The students swirl the paint onto the heart and use a ruler to scrape off the excess. You’re left with these adorable hearts and one gigantic mess! (Which I love…messy is better….)
These heart mosaics turn out so colorful. You can cut the squares ahead of time or you can make this a torn paper lesson and have students tear bits of paper to fill in their hearts.
We also use our hands and feet to make a LOVE poster!
Another simple art project is a slice of love pizza.
We also love using cookie cutters as stamps to make fun art projects. Dip the cookie cutters into the paint and stamp them onto the paper. Easy! Fun!
Grab some bubble wrap and do bubble wrap hearts! The kids painted on the bubble wrap, pressed their paper onto the paint, and cut out a heart!
Valentine’s Day Party Ideas
Of course, we make bags to collect our Valentine’s cards! Ya’ll know how much I believe in SIMPLE! Our bags are no different! We make super simple bags! No fancy boxes or mailboxes. Some paper bags, colored paper and the kids make their own!
Valentine’s Snack Ideas
Milkshakes! We use milk, vanilla ice cream, and red food coloring to make milkshakes! Add some sprinkles for extra fun!
For our Valentine’s Day parfait, we use crushed Oreos (the kids crush them), and whipped cream. Add red food coloring to make your whipped cream pink! On top we add sprinkles and an Oreo!
Here’s another favorite snack idea: Love Potion! This recipe is from
One Sharp Bunch and is a must do!
We have also used decorate your own cookie kits, and let me say, that was the EASIEST And QUIETEST Valentine’s Day party EVER. Definitely doing that EVERY YEAR!
This shirt has been a tradition for years. It’s always a huge hit with the kids and their families! I make mine using my Silhouette Cameo!
Valentine Centers
Sensory Bins
For Valentine’s Day math and literacy centers and resources, check out these creations!
FREEBIES
For more ideas and resources, check out these posts:
