I was about to make a reading passage about the history of Valentine's Day, until I found out that it's history is a little hazy, and what's worse, it's not particularly child-friendly.
Historians believe it was based on a Roman festival called "Lupercalia", which is fine to tell our kids, but the part I'll be leaving out is that the festival was all about fertility, and partnering women with men by lottery!
Not exactly G-rated, is it!
So, moving on, some of the other interesting facts, are that there were actually two saints known as Valentine, cupid is the Roman god of love, roses are a symbol of love and beauty, the first mass-produced Valentine's cards were the business idea of a woman - Esther Howland, and heart-shaped chocolate boxes were Richard Cadbury's idea.
One thing I do like about Valentine's Day nowadays, is that it's shifting from a day of romance, to a day of showing love and kindness to our children and to our loved ones. In the classroom, it can also be a great time to focus on kindness to each other, and to ourselves.
With that in mind, I made this set of kindness affirmation posters for the classroom.
Activities for Valentine's Day
Giving cards is a traditional part of Valentine's Day and a great opportunity for children to make cards for people they love. Here's a cute set of easy-prep cards that children can color in and give to their friends and family.
For a cute craft that children can make and give, check out these gnome and penguin crafts. Or, if you'd like a gnome craft that combines learning, you could try the irregular verbs, fact families, or pronoun gnomes.
Chocolate boxes are fun to make, and although this craft looks like it's 3D it's actually very easy to make and is more 2D, but lifting parts. The chocolates that go inside have fact families or common and proper nouns on them. So cute!
Heart jars are adorable and look great on a bulletin board, plus if you tie learning in, it's even better! I have these for roots, prefixes, and suffixes, and adding and subtracting fractions.
Cupcake crafts are easy to make, and these ones are about the size of letter paper, and come in a range of topics including plural nouns, compound nouns, and skip counting.
Kids love gumball machines so they'll love these learning crafts that make grammar and math so much more fun. The contractions gumball machine is 2D which is perfect for younger children, and the conjunctions and factors and multiples gumball machines are 3D which is great for older children.
Lastly, I just love these mailbox crafts. I loved making letters to post as a kid, and the idea of making a little mailbox with letters to put inside is going to be a winner with your kids! The range for these includes verb tenses, addition and subtraction, and properties of 2D shapes.
With so much to choose from, I'm sure you'll find a resource you'd love to use with your class, and they'll think you're the best teacher ever for making learning so fun!
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