Valentine's Day Ideas
Keep it Simple
Children love Valentine's Day and parties. Simple Valentine's Day ideas for parties are best, as kindergarten students are already so excited.
Keep the classroom atmosphere peaceful and low key by having everything well organized beforehand and not having too many "must do" type of activities.
Before the Valentine's party
A week before a party, send a note home that includes the following:
- Ask that children bring cards for every student in the class, not just their favorite friends
- List all the students' first names in the note in clear, large font
- Ask parents to encourage their children to print the names on the card envelopes (but to help if necessary)
- Ask parents to refrain from adding candy to cards
- Ask a parent to coordinate the food, asking families to bring a small amount of healthy snacks or drinks and asking 2 families to contribute Valentine treats
Have your party at lunch or snack time. This keeps the amount of Valentine's type food necessary to a minimum. Experience has taught me that if there is too much food available, many children will pile their plates with food that doesn't get eaten or will eat too much and feel ill afterwards.
Valentine's Day ideas - Math Pattern Party Hats
Make quick hats with strips of card. Have children glue hearts on in a pattern, blue, red, red, blue, red, red, repeat... on to a 2 inch strip of cardboard. After the pattern is complete, add other decorative bits if the student wants embellish the hat further. After the glue dries, measure the band around the child's head and staple with the smooth side of the staple next to the child's hair. Be sure to print names on the hats to avoid confusion.
Valentine's Day Ideas - Party Favors
Kids enjoy making and playing with Valentine Twirlers
- Cut two identical 3 inch hearts out of card stock
- Tape some sort of ribbon to the inside of one heart (the one in the image has white plastic from an old car wash brush)
- Place a large, thick straw over the ribbon and heart and tape well with masking tape. Make sure that the straw goes to the top of the heart
- Place the top heart over all and staple around with 4 or 5 staples.
- Decorate with stickers
- Children place the straw against flat palms and twirl it around
Valentine's Day Ideas - the Mail Bags
Make Valentine bags with white paper bags decorated with red and pink bingo markers.
Print name cards from the computer with large easy to read font. When the children print their own names on the bags the result can be too messy for the other children to read.
Matching Activity - Mailing the Cards
Ask a parent helper or older buddies to help 3 or 4 children at a time mail their valentine cards. During center time, have the students match the names on their card envelopes to the name on the bags if they can not read them.
Opening Cards - not as simple as it seems!
The first time I had a Valentine's party in my kindergarten class, there was great confusion after opening the cards. As we had no desks and were too crowded at the tables, we sat in a circle on the carpet and soon cards were mixed up, torn envelopes were spread all over, candy was scattered about, students were sad discovering their mail bags were scrunched. I was dreaming of coffee in a relaxing restaurant!
The following year, I had the children sit on mats in a circle on the carpet with an arms distance between them.. I acted out the worst case scenario. I excitedly opened my cards, threw my cards about, sat on and crushed my bag as I showed my cards to the kids sitting next to me and generally made a confusing mess. The children loved watching their teacher being silly. We then discuss my actions and the problems I had created.
With prompting, we talked about mixing up cards, mess all over, sitting on your friends or own mail bag, how to create a space for yourself with room on each side, placing your bag in front of you and any other suggestions the students come up with.
Opening cards was much more organized and enjoyable after that. Place a recycling container in the middle of the circle for torn envelopes.
Valentine's Day Ideas - Games
After cleaning the room, play a few simple games to finish the day.
Pocket chart hearts counting game
- Make fairly large hearts out of card stock
- Print a simple action on the back (Turn around 2 times)
- Laminate the hearts if you want to use them yearly
- Place hearts in the pocket chart.
- Each child gets a turn flipping one over and then every one follows the action (jump 5 times, give 8 loud claps, march on the spot while you count to ten...)
Variation on pocket chart hearts
- Put numbers on half the hearts and an action on the other hearts (jumps, claps...)
- Place number and action hearts separately on pocket chart
- One student has a turn choosing a number, another child chooses an action
- All children act out the result... 4 claps, 7 jumps
Ring to my Friend
Sing to the tune of, "Mary had a little Lamb"
Materials:
A long piece of cord the length of the children sitting in a circle on the carpet.
A toy ring ( a big bead also works) - Thread it through the cord
Tie the cord
- Children sit in a circle
- One child stands in the center of the circle
- As the children sing the song below they slide the ring to the next child
- When the song ends the child in the middle guesses who has the ring in his/her hand
- Repeat
I sent a ring to my friend, to my friend, to my friend
I sent a ring to my friend on Valentine's Day
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