This year I want to give my students homemade valentines. I searched online a found a bunch of ideas but decided to make my own. Here are the two I came up with.
I have seen teachers fill bags with goldfish for the first day of school and loved that idea. I put cupcake fish in the bag for a sweet treat for the kiddos. The other one is a cute pencil holder and heavens my students tear through a serious amount of pencils. I try to give pencils as prizes often so they keep a healthy supply. I printed both on card stock so they would stand some wear and tear. I cut two vertical cuts on the heart valentine to stick the pencil through. I wish I would have slanted it more to make it look like an arrow. You can download the free printable here which includes two other templates.
The reindeer that took so much time to create have been repurposed! The sign says, antlers over hooves in love! We were so happy to think of a way to keep these cuties for a few more months.
The kids decorated hearts to go along with the reindeer.
Tissue paper hearts
This activity is was easy to put together from materials all the way to the actual project and it looks lovely hanging in the windows. My daughter did this at our local public library and it was too fun to not share :)
The first step is to cut out a heart outline. Then put the heart on contact paper.
Fill the heart with tissue paper and cover the heart and tissue paper with contact paper. Some of my kids had trouble with this step and would take the contact paper off after applying it. It is pretty forgiving but younger kids might need more help with this part.
Then cut out the heart. We hung ours up in the window.
I love the way they look hanging in the windows and can't wait to see them on a sunny day.
Writing from the heart
In writing we used these hearts that I found on TPT (and now I cannot find them again to give the author credit) :( The kids wrote things and people they love in the hearts and colored the things one color and the people another color. (For a quick noun review my partner teacher added places as a third choice.) They cut them out and glued them to construction paper. The following day they chose a thing/person from their heart to write about or to. Some students chose to write acrostic poems, others wrote letters, some drew pictures to go along with their writing. (I will get pictures of the finished product next week.)
