Valentine’s Day is right around the corner? Are you ready?
Whether you are teaching online or in-person, Valentine’s Day might look a little bit different this year. Many of our traditional holiday activities just aren’t possible.
But just because we are socially distancing doesn’t mean we can’t share the love. In fact, our students probably need a little extra dose of care this year.
Here are some Valentine’s day ideas you can safely do. We have included ideas for virtual learning, in-person learning, and activities that can be done in both learning environments. You are sure to find some ideas that you are your students will love!
Virtual Valentine’s Day Activities
Heart Heathy
February is heart health month. And it’s a great time to get kids moving. Put a timer on your screen and challenge kids to see how many jumping jacks, high knees, or sit-ups they can do in a minute. You can also turn this into a math activity by making a bar graph, finding the mean, median, or mode, or estimating. I always loved having my third graders skip count while we were doing our jumping jacks. It’s multiplication practice!
Books We Love
Have every student select their favorite book and write a couple of sentences. Students can try and convince others to read the book. Another option is to have students share the review, but not the book title. Their classmates can guess the book titles.
Postcards
I usually create a chart at Valentine’s Day “__ Things I Love.” I fill in the blank with the number of students I have that year. Then I write each student’s name and something that I love about them underneath. Instead of writing this on one sheet of paper you could mail or drop off postcards to each student with one thing you love about them. If you don’t have time to deliver or mail a post card, you can always send an eCard!
Full of Love Slides
It’s fun for students to brainstorm all of the things they love: candy, restaurants, movies, books, sports, etc. An easy virtual activity would be to have each student create a Google Slide filled with pictures of the things they love. Think of it as a scrapbook page filled with everything that makes your students smile!
In-Person Valentine’s Day Activities
Valentine’s Day Paper Bag Book
If you love simple and cute, you are going to adore this project! Paper bag books are literally one of my very favorite classroom activities.
Each of your students will need three paper lunch bags. You can find them at Walmart or any grocery store. You will put the bags on top of each other, fold them to form a book and staple the spine.
Then your students will write and color all of the pages that they glue in their book. It is so much fun for them to write about the books they love, things they love about school and so much more.
Shop This Post
Valentine’s Day STEM Activities
Your students can engineer structures out of toothpicks and heart-shaped jelly candy or heart shaped marshmallows. Who can make the tallest structure?
Or, how about a heart-launcher catapult? Your students will love this one and it’s easy to prep.
Students can also make Valentine’s Day slime with add sequins, glitter, or confetti.
You can learn more about these ideas from Little Bins Little Hands by clicking HERE.
Valentine’s Day Vocabulary
I love anytime I can make something academic, such as vocabulary, and give it a fun holiday spin!
Take a week long break from your usual vocabulary program and use these fun Valentine’s Day words instead. Students will be recording definitions, writing sentences, and brainstorming synonyms and antonyms. Then you can end the week with a quick assessment.
This is a great way to make word acquisition more fun!
Virtual OR Socially Distant Valentine’s Day Activities
Making Cards
Making cards is a traditional Valentine’s Day activity. This is a great opportunity to thank the medical professionals working hard in your community or share a little love with nursing home residents. If you are teaching virtually an easy way to do this is to have students make their cards in Google slides. You can print them out and send them off!
Valentine’s Day Writing
Holidays are a great time to use a writing prompt. In our 60 Free Writing prompts we have 5 prompts just for February. Select one of these prompts to get your students in Valentine’s state-of-mind.
The Love You More Poem is also a great activity whether you are in person or online. Students make a list of things that they love and insert it into a poem for a parent or loved one.
Valentine’s Day Project-Based Learning
We have a brand new Valentine’s Day resource! Our Valentine Cupcakes project based learning resource includes a digital and a printable version, so it is perfect for in-person and at-home learning.
Students will be using real world math skills as they relate to baking cupcakes. Graphing, adding, multiplying, elapsed time, and fractions are all reviewed in this engaging activity.
This new resource comes with everything you need to make math class sweet. It is designed for grades 2-5 and comes with multiple ways to differentiate so you can ensure that every student gets a challenge that’s just right for them. Detailed teacher directions explain how to use the activities whether you are in person or online. And this activity can be assigned to students individually, in partners or teams, or even used in small groups. You can read more about Valentine Cupcakes here.
I know your students will LOVE this new Valentine project based learning activity,
Shop This Post
I hope that all of these classroom Valentine’s Day activities really have you feeling the love!
Have a Not So Wimpy Day,
Thanks!
Awesome!
Enjoy!