Blog Hoppin': Valentine's Day in the Classroom

Hey Blog Hoppers! It's Christy and Tammy from Fluttering Through First Grade. We love celebrating Valentine's Day in our classroom. Here are a few of our favorite ways to celebrate Love Day with the Littles...

We throw a red party every Valentine's Day. From red foods to wearing red, we embrace the color of love all day long. We try to keep it somewhat healthy with bagels, strawberry cream cheese, and red fruits.

We sneak in a little reading and writing by creating Friendship Bingo mats using our class names and other Valentine's Day vocabulary.

We give them conversation hearts as markers. They love being the "callers" when we play!

You can download our Red Party and Friendship Bingo templates {here}.

Our class loves making bookmarks. These are nothing fancy, but given a simple piece of red posterboard, foam stickers, yarn, and...wait for it...MARKERS, they love crafting these to declare their love for reading!

Hot Spot Relay races are a fun challenge that gets them moving and practicing teamwork too. We simply cut 2 large construction paper hearts out for each team (cut a few extras in case there is an accidental rip). Split the class in half and send them walking their way on the hot spots. The goal is to move each heart as you step, not stepping on the ground (AKA "hot lava") below. It's tricky, but they get the hang of it. For younger kids, don't have them take as many steps. Once they reach the end, they pick up their hot spots and run back to the start to tag the next person.

Back in class, we race to stack 10 conversation hearts. You can adjust the number depending upon the age of the kids.

Of all the activities we do on Valentine's Day, our favorite is giving our students an opportunity to spread kindness. We spread some love around our school by creating and posting kindness messages throughout the halls.

We also spend a lot of time teaching and giving compliments. It is one of our most powerful lessons all year and carries us through the months beyond Valentine's Day. Here's our original post about using Compli-mats in the classroom. We've updated our templates and added several more for use beyond Valentine's Day.