Each February when Valentine's day comes along I think about cool and interesting ways to celebrate it and how I can use this holiday with my ESL students to teach them vocabulary or grammar whilst using the fun love filled themed holiday that is St Valentine's day.
Do your students get excited about the aspect of giving and receiving cards or presents for V-day? Do you celebrate it with your whole class? Or do you dread Valentine's day because you find it difficult to find age appropriate activities and crafts to do? Well, worry not teacher friend, here I have some tried and tested awesome ideas for you that over the years my students have really enjoyed taking part in.
Now if you don’t want to make valentine’s day about romance? Why don’t you make it about friendship and being thankful for our classmates? There are also some fun activities based upon friendship and kindness rather than romance and hearts too, so keep scrolling!
Thumb body loves you card - Simple, easy and cute, this play on words card uses students thumb prints to make it. It’s quick to make but is very effective for all ages on Valentine's day.
Hand print hearts card - A little bit messy but I love this sweet card. Plus it’s a nice activity to do in pairs promoting fun and friendship in the classroom. I’ll paint yours, if you paint mine!
Reader’s Theatre Valentine’s Story - Reader’s theatre is great for improving students reading fluency and pronunciation for ESL’s. It has many other benefits too. Read about them here.
However in this specific Valentines day Reader’s Theatre that I have written, there has been a big mix up amongst friends and now Hannah needs to find a way to apologise to her friend. Highly recommended for grades 3-6 and great for the week of Valentine’s day AND I also have it in Spanish too!
Love you to pieces card - A lovely card with an expression to teach ESL students. It's also great for recycling paper too. (Win - Win in my book!) It does take up some time but makes a very pretty end result.
Tissue paper heart sun catcher - A cute craft that looks wonderful on windows and doors to decorate around valentines day. It makes a great gift too! A nice hands-on activity for any age. With small ones we can use bigger bits of paper and with older ones they can use smaller pieces making it more intricate and mosaic like. Beautiful either way.
Create a heart tree in the classroom - Using hearts as the ‘leaves’ students each have a heart and can draw things they love or things that represent them on the hearts. When we add the hearts to the tree it shows each student's unique beauty and creates a tree of life.
Fingerprint heart counting activity - How nice is this for our younger students and for ESL to practise counting or even colours too. Teach them how to make a heart using two fingerprints. Then provide a paper and ask students to count out loud to make the number of hearts you want.
ESL tip - I actually give them a blank paper and make it a listening activity by giving instructions like ‘Make 5 pink hearts. Now make 9 blue hearts’. Until the paper is full.
Jar of hearts - Kindness activity for friends and classmates. The days before valentines day students can take hearts and write something they admire or find great about that student and on Valentines day they hearts can be put on the students desk for them to read or you can take the hearts and stick them on a paper with a jar on it to create a nice memory to take home and cherish.
Heart paper rolling card - A really elegant card for teens and tweens specifically, but it does take some time to complete so prepare for that. However it is a very impressive card to give to someone they love.
Broken heart matching game - I use this with older ESLs to practise vocabulary. It’s fun, quick and effective for learning grammar. There are two versions available at the moment adjectives - matching opposites and verbs- matching present simple and past simple.
Toilet roll heart stamping- Great for little hands and young learners. Gives them each a stamp and paper and watch them create a beautiful art piece to take home to parents whilst exploring colour mixing
Subject verb agreements Boom Cards - Any excuse to practise grammar for me! This digital activity helps students with subject verb agreements whilst making valentines themed sentences. A sneaky way to practise grammar without your kids noticing because they think it's a V-day activity!
Adjectives activity - This is a nice class activity for everyone to join in. First I like to brainstorm different adjectives to describe people as a group. Therefore weaker and stronger students can help each other and learn new words. Then each student has a paper to write their name on and a heart around it. They then have 10 minutes to walk around the classroom and write one adjective in every student's paper to describe that student. I encourage students not to repeat words already written and motivate them to make it beautiful. Then students get to return to their paper and read what has been written. A major plus point to this activity is that it is anonymous, so there's less embarrassment in the class and people can speak their truth, which works especially well for teens and tweens.
Notes of kindness door decoration - Similar to the above activity but using post-its (FUN!) and the doors to the classroom. The week of valentines day write students' names on a post-it and stick it to your door. Throughout the week others can write adjectives or words of kindness to describe that person on their post-it. It’s great fun to read and has the same pros to the above activity.
And there you have it…. 14 ways to celebrate February 14th with your class and create a beautiful, positive Valentine’s Day in your classroom. Let me know how you get on! I’d love to hear from you either here or you can tag me on Instagram and show me your beautiful crafts and cards!
Have a great Valentine’s day!
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