Valentine’s Day in the upper elementary classroom can be both academic and fun! My fifth graders still look forward to exchanging valentines and making valentine boxes to collect them in.
To help keep your students learning through it all, here are a few fun Valentine’s Day activities for upper elementary that your students will love on Valentine’s Day or anytime in February.
Valentine’s Day Activities ~ Compliments
Rather than exchanging Valentines, have your students exchange Valentine’s Day Compliments about each other.
Students watch a PowerPoint presentation about how to give and write compliments. They then write compliments to their classmates and hand them out.
When I did these Valentine’s Day activities in my upper elementary classroom, I had students who kept the compliments given to them for the rest of the year! Now that’s impact!
Check out my blog post on Valentine’s Day Compliments.
Valentine’s Day Random Acts of Kindness
One year, I was in a pinch. I didn’t have enough energy to plan a big Valentine’s Day. So I improvised with this activity, and it became a Valentine’s Day staple in my classroom.
For this activity, I put a large piece of butcher paper up in our classroom and a whole bunch of precut hearts. I challenged my students to perform at least one random act of kindness for someone at school each day the week of Valentine’s Day.
Once they completed the kindness act, they wrote what they did (no names!) and taped it on the butcher paper.
By the end of the week, we had a beautiful bulletin board and a wonderful reminder of how kindness changes the receiver and the giver.
Valentine’s Day Activities! ELA
The week before Valentine’s Day often falls right before our four-day weekend to celebrate President’s Day. Since I often found these weeks crazy, I opted for centers and independent learning packets. These ELA Valentine Activities fit perfectly. It includes reading comprehension pages, fact and opinion, and a verb tense review. Plus, it has some fun word scramble and ABC order activities to keep those big kid minds busy. Easy to prep, print and go. What could be better this time of year?
Valentine’s Day Activities ~ Math Review
Again, why fight the chaos? February is the perfect time to review essential math concepts.
This Valentine’s Day Math resource has a fun place value craftivity that is perfect for the week of Valentine’s Day. It also has tons of independent, engaging fraction activities and measurement conversions. Truly a complete review without your students even realizing it!
Valentine’s Day Poetry
True confession. I have never enjoyed teaching poetry. But Valentine’s Day does lend itself to poetry.
Grab some Free Valentine stationery and let your students write Haiku’s, Acrostic, Cinquains, Shape Poems, Diamante, or even Free Verse.
You will be amazed at your students’ creativity and how easy it was to sneak in a poetry lesson.
However you decide to celebrate Valentine’s Day in your classroom, as long as you show love and kindness, you have done enough!
