Valentine's Themed Activities For February
Here are ways to make academics part of your Valentine's Day-related lessons.
By Elisa Jackson
During the month of February, students are very focused on Valentine’s Day. While we can’t have Valentine's parties everyday, we can create some fun Valentine-inspired academic lessons. Here are some simple Valentine's lessons that have academic value.
In many elementary math lessons, students use manipulatives. You can create your own manipulatives out of many small hearts. Use these small hearts for adding, subtracting, identifying patterns, place value, and more. You can have students make groups of 10, 20, or 30 hearts. Using them as a manipulative is always fun for the students. Utilizing hearts of different sizes can help students to practice going from smallest to largest. Additionally, students can learn about symmetry by being given one half of a heart with designs on it, then having to complete the empty half of the heart by mirroring the designs.
When it comes to language arts, there are a lot of Valentine-inspired lessons you can do. If you are working on letter writing, have students write a letter to another student telling them what they like about them, and why they enjoy being their friend. Or students can create a card that adheres to specific sentence structure, punctuation, and grammar requirements. You could also have students write a Valentine’s poem. For homework, they can edit the grammar and punctuation in their writing assignments.
There are many activities that you can do with older students as well. They can research the origin of Valentine’s Day, and write a report on its history in our culture. You can have students do an Internet search in which they go to different websites and answer specific questions about Valentine’s Day. If they are in an advanced art class, you could have them complete shading, drawing, perspective, and abstract art pieces with hearts. Students could also create sculptures using 3-dimensional hearts.
In the area of nutrition, you can have a discussion with the class on healthy alternatives to their favorite sweets on Valentine’s Day. Students can make a chart telling what they could substitute for the sweets. Some of these substitutions can include dark chocolate instead of milk chocolate, making cookies with sugar substitutes instead of sugar, and using all natural peanut butter in treats instead of regular peanut butter. Students could also make their own box of chocolates with dark chocolate if you have the supplies to do so. Here are some more activities for your students which will engage them in academics related to Valentine’s Day.
Valentines' Day Lesson Plans:
Students research Valentine's Day and take an online quiz about it.
Students follow recipes and make Valentine's Day treats.
Physical fitness for Valentine's Day
Students participate in four physical fitness activities that are based on Valentine's Day.
Students read a paragraph about Valentine's Day and fill in the blanks to the paragraph with words from a word bank.