Here are engaging Valentine’s Day teaching ideas to help you plan your day with your students. *I have included tons of free printables and digital activities.
Start your day with Valentine’s Day themed Google Slides. These are totally free and my own first grade students LOVE them. I have included two days worth of slides, a sample from my Valentines Slides and my Kindness Slides. They focus on these read alouds: Love by Matt de La Pena and Somebody Loves You Mr. Hatch by Eileen Spinelli.
The slides lead right into my favorite type of quick holiday activity, banners!
I have a deluxe Valentine’s Day Banner where the students write about something that they will love forever. I also have a Sprinkle Kindness Banner where the students write about a way to sprinkle kindness.
I have a free sample banner for the resource linked below.
Next up, we have center time. Each rotation should be between 20 and 28 minutes each. Valentine’s Day themed centers are also a fun yet structured way to celebrate the day. Normally, I strictly do literacy centers during my literacy block and math centers during my math block but for Valentine’s Day I mix them up. I take centers from my Valentine’s Day resource and mix them with my Valentine’s Math Centers.
Here are some of my favorite math centers. Use candy hearts as counters and your room will smell so sweet!
Here is a free literacy center for you:
All of these activities lead us to right before lunch time. Then we give out our Valentines, which takes forever! I use gift bags as mailboxes and we usually prepare them the day or two before. Over the years I have used two different Valentine’s Day mailbox bag ideas. The first one is from Teaching with a Mountain View:
The second one is a freebie by Literacy Please. It is a Love Monster Bag and you can grab it HERE. I type the students’ names for the heart tags by inserting hearts into a Power Point File and then using a Babbling Abby Font.
We end the day by making a card for our families, have a Valentine’s Day cookie snack, and I hand out my gifts for the students using one of my Valentine’s Day freebie tags that I have linked below. This year I am giving out the Chick ‘n’ Pug: Love Pug book. Last year, I gave out heart shaped Pop-Its.
Here are quick links to my Valentine’s Day Freebies:
The place value 120 chart mystery is for purchase in my store, but you can grab it for free by clicking the image below:
I hope you have an amazing Valentine’s Day with your students. I have compiled my favorite Valentine’s Day books and items through the link below:
Pinterest Images:
