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 also decorate with paper chains made by the kids (a perfect STEM activity) and hearts with each child’s name on it!
Valentine’s Day: Literacy Ideas
Here are some more ideas for The Day It Rained Hearts:
Another great Valentine’s Day read-aloud is A Crankenstein Valentine!
After reading the story, we work on story elements with a story map!
And then we share what makes us cranky and what makes us say YECCH!
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!
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.
Another fun math activity for math and for the book The Day It Rained Hearts is to make an umbrella and hearts to practice subtraction!
Valentine’s Day: 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!
You can also practice estimating and counting with candy hearts! Fill a bowl with candy hearts and the students estimate how many hearts they can grab with their hands. Record their estiamtion on the chart. Then let them grab a handful of hearts and count how many the grabbed. Record the amount and compare it to their estimation!
Valentine’s Day STEM
Here are some fun Valentine’s Day STEM projects! 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!
We also stack marshmallow hearts!
Valentine’s Day: Art Projects
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!
Last year, we made envelopes for our cards, and it was my favorite ever. So easy and worked great!
We like to have a “Nacho Average Valentine’s Day” party! Instead of 143 containers of sweets, we have NACHOS!
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!
We also took a fun Valentine’s Day picture using this pink garland I found at Walmart during Christmas!
Valentine’s Snack Ideas
Milkshakes! We use milk, vanilla ice cream, and red food coloring to make milkshakes! Add some sprinkles for extra fun!
Sensory Bins
For our Valentine’s Day sensory bins, we use fake rose petals and glitter balls from the Dollar Tree. We also use pasta dyed red. The hearts are from our Heartbreaker resources and our emoji hearts!
Valentine’s Day DIY Ideas
The dice pillow is from Target. Students roll the dice and add glitter hearts!
Grab some foam shapes and plastic hearts from Dollar Tree. Write numbers on the hearts. Students count the hearts. They can use a ten frame sheet to write the number and make a ten frame.
We grabbed heart containers at Dollar Tree. Write letters using a sharpie. We printed CVC pictures on clear mailing labels and stuck those on as well. Students say the word, segment the sounds and spell the sound. Then, they write the word on their paper.
Here’s another light table idea! These are candy containers from Dollar Tree. I write numbers on half of the container. The students place them on the light box and use some acrylic Valentine’s Day table scatter to count!
For more Valentine’s Day resources, click any of these resources:
FREEBIES
