Valentine’s Day is one of the most exciting holidays for elementary-aged students. Who doesn’t love all of the thoughtful cards and delicious sweets? Valentine’s Day is the perfect time to harness this excitement and do a variety of meaningful and exciting activities. Here are my top four Valentine’s Day teaching ideas and resources.
Take your students to Rome to learn all about the history behind this holiday. Students will learn about St. Valentine, the myth of Cupid, the city of Rome, and multiple important landmarks in Rome. While exploring, students will practice skills like cause and effect, compare and contrast, and they will even write their own Valentine’s Day card.
Get those thinking hats on and start using those critical thinking and teamwork skills! With these two PBLs, your students will be having so much fun using a variety of skills and working in teams that they won’t even realize they are learning.
1st-2nd grade students will have a blast working together to Build a Valentine Bakery Food Truck. In this PBL, students will read to build background knowledge, practice composing shapes to make treats, partition baked goods, and design a bakery truck!
3rd-5th grade students can work on a geometry PBL where they use geometry skills to plan valentines and Valentine’s Day party treats. (Making the valentines is not necessary, but optional.)
With this Valentine’s Day teaching idea, your students can practice key reading comprehension or math skills while following along with a fun Valentine’s Day themed story!
By doing good deeds on Valentine’s Day, you’ll help Cupid keep his wings! Give this cherub a hand because he’s not the only one who needs help this holiday. Plenty of people need cards, flowers, sweets, or dance moves. So put the heart-shaped arrows away and make yourself useful this Valentine’s Day! To escape, students will complete four scaffolded reading comprehension challenges with multiple-choice questions.
Where did the valentines go? On February 14th, when the kids in Ms. Heart’s class came back from lunch, they found empty boxes where their handcrafted cards had been stuffed. As a sleuth, your students will rule out the suspects to solve the mystery by answering standards-based math questions.
Students can complete any of these escape rooms collaboratively in groups using the print version, in Google Slides, or in our new web-based, self-correcting Webscape.
Ditch the traditional valentines and make your valentine exchange more meaningful. Build your classroom culture by encouraging your students to see the best in each other. Develop relationships and show students the value of good words and compliments. Discuss with students why you give someone a compliment (to show someone what you appreciate about them). Give students the time to think about and write what they appreciate about each member of the class. You can have each student think of one statement they can say about each of their classmates, or you can randomly select a few students for each student to write about. Feel free to use this template for your compliments.
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