Valentine's Week

The week of Valentine's Day is always one of my most favorite weeks of the year! We started off our week by reading The Biggest Valentine Ever. This book is one in a series by Steven Kroll. Around Halloween we read The Biggest Pumpkin Ever so we were able to compare and contrast the two stories. This story is also a great one to teach author's purpose because it has a clear lesson. We talked about what the author's purpose meant and we discovered in this story the author was trying to tell us that when we work together we can often accomplish more than we can alone.

In the story, Clayton and Desmond work together to make a mouse shaped valentine for their teacher. As a connection to the story, we put together valentine bags by making heart shaped animals. I LOVE these!

Next we read Clifford's First Valentine's Day and practiced retelling the story elements on a chain of hearts.

On Valentine's Day, we read the book Valentine's Day by Gail Gibbons to learn a little bit about the history and symbols of the day. Everyone was very interested, and we learned a lot of new information. After reading, each student traced and cut out a large heart. Inside the heart they wrote 3 facts they learned about Valentine's Day:

Then, after getting their work checked by me, they flipped it over and used watercolors to paint the other side. These turned out great and are currently hanging in our hallway!

To get ready for our Valentine's Party, we put together these books:

During the party in the afternoon, students were able to open all the Valentine's from their friends. We talked about making sure to say thank you and actually read the valentine, not to just take the candy or prize and throw the rest away. To help the kids remember to do these, we used these books. As the opened a card from their bag they would read who it was from, say thank you, then glue it into the book. This makes sure they take the time to look at the valentine's and leaves students with a nice keepsake to take home.

I LOVE watching the kids open their valentines. All you can hear in the room is "THANK YOU ___" "THANK YOU ____" over and over. Melts my heart every time.

I loved spending the week with each of my 20 little Valentines!