Valentine’s Day Learning and Printable Valentines for Students

January 17, 2015

Looking for some fun Valentine’s Day activities and freebies? This post has some of my favorites!!

Let’s start with a craft! One year in Kindergarten, we did this adorable heart panda craft – it looked something like this:

This photo is from Crafty Morning. Click on the image above for the link. The craft is super simple and perfect for PreK, K, or first grade!

In addition to fun activities the day of Valentine’s Day, I like to use Valentine’s Day themed literacy and math activities for a couple of weeks leading up to the holiday. Here are some photos from the different activities I’ve created:

This word family spinner game has kids use a paperclip and pencil to spin twice – once for the first letter of a word and once for the word family pattern. When a child is able to make a real word from the two parts spun, she writes it down on the recording sheet. The first player to fill up their recording sheet is the winner! This game is from my Valentine’s Day Literacy Pack for K-1.

This pack has 4 different centers games/activities (actually 8 total, because there is a Kindergarten version and a first grade version for each game). In addition to the centers games and activities, you get some print-and-go, no prep literacy sheets. Click on the image below to find out more.

I also have a math activity pack for Valentine’s Day, also for K-1.

The game shown above has kids use printable heart dominoes to find different ways of making a number (you can use any number up to 18 as the target number). For example, if you want kids to find ways to make the number ten, they might pull out dominoes that have 2 and 8 on them, and 4 and 6 on them. Students write a number equation and draw the dominoes they find that make the target number.

Like the literacy centers, this pack has 4 games (each game has a different version for K and 1st), as well as print-and-go, no prep math sheets for each grade level.

You can also buy the literacy and math centers together, for a discount!

Last year we had a lot of fun playing Valentine’s Day BINGO during the weeks leading up to the holiday.

The pictures above are from the 2nd grade version. You use an interactive white board or other projector to show the math questions, and then the kids cover the corresponding number answer on their Bingo cards. There are two ways to play the 2nd grade version – mixed addition and subtraction within 20 (top photo), or Common Core math practice (bottom photo). The Common Core math practice covers time, graphing, word problems, number patterns, place value, money, simple fractions, and more (we used it to get ready for our spring MAP test).

I’ve also created Valentine’s Day Bingo for Kindergarten and first grade. The Kindergarten version has 4 ways to play: addition within 5, subtraction within 5, mixed addition and subtraction within 5, and number sense fluency (subitizing).

The first grade version also has 4 ways to play: addition within 10, subtraction within 10, mixed addition and subtraction within 10, and number sense fluency (subtilizing).

And now for the free Valentines!! I tend to be a little picky about what Valentines I give my students, so I just decided to make my own. Click on any of the images to download a set for your own students (there’s even a set in Spanish!).