Lucky Charms St. Patrick’s Day Activities (& More Ideas for Teachers)[episode 62]

Kelsey

You are listening to episode number 57 of wife teacher mommy the podcast seven valentine’s day class activities that kids will love wondering what you can do for Valentine’s Day in the classroom or with your kids at home. I have so many ideas to share with you today so you’re bound to be able to take something away from today’s episode to help you celebrate.

Kelsey

I’m so glad you’re here listening to wife teacher mommy the podcast today. I’m your host Kelsey Sorenson, a former elementary teacher turned home school mom. Whether you are a teacher or a homeschool parent, my goal at wife teacher mommy is to provide you with both teaching ideas and mindset tools to help you live your absolute best teacher life. Be sure to hit subscribe on your favorite podcast app so you don’t miss an episode. Now let’s go.

Kelsey

Today, we’re talking Valentine’s Day. It’s almost the month of love when this episode airs. And I just love Valentine’s Day. I love hearts. I love pink and red and white and all amazing candy hearts and treats and chocolate. It is such a great time. I love Valentine’s Day, and doing Valentine party planning as a teacher. I’ve done it as a room mom for my children and just doing fun activities with my kids at home, I have had so many ideas that I’ve implemented. And then my team has also come up with great ideas as we’ve come together to create so many resources over the past few years. And today I’m taking all of those ideas together and sharing them with you. So you’ll be buzzing with ideas and excited to celebrate Valentine’s day in the classroom whether or not you were before you hit play on this episode. And while no purchase is necessary to glean so many ideas from today, I want to tell you right away on this episode. First, if you’re listening live, we have not told our email list about this we have not posted on social media or anything only here on the podcast because you’re taking the time each week or however often or even just today, you’re welcome to listen to me for about like 30 minutes. And that is a big commitment. So I wanted to give you the first chance as a podcast listener to check out our Valentine’s Day bundle. And if you’re a wife, teacher, mommy club member first I want to say that you don’t need this, you already have access to the resources. So go utilize them as part of your club experience. But if you’re not, we have a crazy incredible good deal for you all the ideas I give to you today, you’ll have ready to go resources to make it super easy peasy.

If you grab the bundle, it is all the Valentine’s Day resources we’ve created for all grade levels, we’ve taken it, we’ve slashed the price and made it so you can access all of them for way less than you’d have to pay to buy each individual resource. So you can learn more about that bundle. By checking out the link in the show notes which we’re going to link to this bundle that we’re so excited about, you can find out more information on that link. Because I’m recording ahead of time, we are still as of 1am recording figuring out some of the details, we know what’s going to be in it. But we’re not sure we still have to add up what the total value is and figure out the pricing. But we know we’re going to slash it way down. So go to the show notes and check it out. However through this episode, I’ll also explain for how you can do any of these ideas without purchasing a resource whenever that is possible, which is possible a lot. So you can take the ideas and do them all by yourself too. And we’re going over so many ideas today like candy HeartMath, doing a secret Valentine art and craft ideas how to decorate for your party, punny card quote ideas with a gift that you could put with it for your students, your children or your co workers etc. So be sure to listen all the way through this episode. So you can take advantage of all these ideas and start your Valentine planning on the right foot. Now, let’s start by talking number one. So I mentioned like seven activities and actually I kind of lied. There’s way more than seven I just put it into seven categories. So the first category is just general Valentine’s Day party ideas. So first, we want to talk about the decor right. And one thing that I love is creating a cute banner because it can be easy. You can just kind of get colored paper, cut it up, string it through yarn, and then you can write like Happy Valentine’s Day.

That is what I like to do for my decor. I’m not a huge decorator. Now if you ask Rachel on my team She would have like so many ideas were amazing decorating. She’s incredible. She just decorated for our team party last week, which was so much fun. But I would recommend doing a banner. And obviously getting lots of fun heart themed things from Dollar Tree Dollar Tree is always the best. Also, another fun idea is don’t eat Pete, which is a little game and I put it under here because it’s just kind of a general game. It doesn’t really fit into an educational category. But it’s really fun. So basically, you have a kind of looks like a bingo board. So you could make this so you could find it online where you basically have like all these different Valentine’s pictures you have like four across four down is what we have on ours in our Valentine’s Day party back you have them placed a piece of candy on each square. So opposite of bingo they start with already on there, then you choose a person to send out of the room, while the rest of the players choose which face on the card will be peed. So again, everybody has the same card in this one instead of different ones, than the person in the hallway comes back into the room and starts eating the candy one piece at a time trying not to eat Pete. Now the player can point to each piece they intend to eat, the class can say no, if it is not p and the player may eat that piece of candy. If the person points to Pete and the other players yell don’t eat Pete that person’s turn is over so they get more candy, the longer it takes them to find Pete so it’s a super fun engaging game that your kids will just laugh over build community is not really educational, but it’s super fun.

Another one like that is Bingo. Like I kind of mentioned self explanatory, I’m sure most of you know bingo. You could find a Valentine’s themed one you could probably Google and find tons of these kids love bingo especially when they get to use candy hearts for it. Now a banner a donate P and bingo are included in our Valentine’s Day party pack, which is a Club exclusive resource. Up until now the only way to get it was by being in wife, teacher mommy club. But if you get the Valentine’s Day bundle, it’s included in there. Now let’s talk about some things that are a little bit more educational. So we’re going to talk about like word work, etc. So that’s category number two. So another one would be a word scramble. So you can have themed words scrambled up. So say for candy, you would have spell da ncy. And they would have to figure out how to unscramble the word or EB FRARYU. For February. You could write these on the board and do it as a class or type them up in a Word doc, it really helps with their critical thinking and being able to you know, just unscramble those words.

Another fun one is a word of search. I loved word searches as a child I love going through finding the letters and finding all the words is a great way for them to practice spelling words letter recognition, etc. Another fun one is that we have in that party pack is a secret message from Cupid. And this helps with their code, cracking the code skills. So there’s a picture for each letter, and then they get to crack the code of what the secret message from Cupid is. So remember, if you’re in the club or buy the bundle, make sure to check out that party pack all this is done for you. We have a party pack for every single major holiday in the club, their Club exclusive, but you can try it the Valentine’s Day One just by purchasing the bundle a one time purchase. Okay, so number three, category number three for Valentine’s Day class activities is Valentine’s Day writing. So the first one is doing a secret Valentine. I love doing this for any month any theme, but for Valentine’s Day, the theme is extra fun, because it’s a secret Valentine. So you can assign each student someone to secretly start reading to starting on February 1, for example, or whenever you you decide to start the activity. And they continue to write to each other throughout the month secretly. So you can include writing prompts to help them come up with things such as telling them write a compliment to your secret Valentine, they’ll secretly delivered the letter and everybody’s getting these letters with nice things. And then each week, what I like to do is also have a report to teach or prompt, because

I liked this to kind of be a two side of a classroom community activity. So first, they’re writing the nice letters. But then I also want them actually doing something nice for this person each week, but then they try not to get caught, you know. So it’s like a subtle, like doing a nice thing for people. And then they can also try to do it for other people into tricking them into thinking that they’re the secret Valentine. Kids have so much fun with this and that helps build that classroom community. So I have them each week report to me report to the teacher, um, something nice they did and it gets they have to write this right. So writing prompt. So the great thing is they get to practice writing both in the letters and in the reporting to their teacher. And you can decide if you want to deliver the letters or have the kids deliver them secretly depending on if you want to be reading the ones that they write to their students and grading them or checking their reading or if it’s more of just a fun thing. And then their report to teacher ones get turned in. At the end. You can do a big reveal activity you could have like get in a circle and talk about who has each one or there’s one where you like put their names on their backs and I get to go around and ask yes or no questions. I talk about this a lot more on episode 45 of the podcast, which is how to do a Secret Santa in the classroom or homeschool. I go way more in depth on how to do this type of activity in that episode. It’s essentially the same thing one is just a secret see into the other is a secret Valentine.

So I go way more in depth because they do a full episode on it where I need to kind of move on to the next thing now so but our done for you secret Valentine activity is also part of that Valentine’s Day bundles. So if you’re like say no more I want to do this activity and I want you to do all the prep for me. Go check out that bundle if you’re in the club, go and grab it. Now next we’re writing we have these really cute right circle draw worksheets. And for writing, we have ones that are the alphabet. So if you have young learners, or even learners that just need to work on their handwriting, which we have, right, you could have third graders need to do that we have these worksheets where they like write the letters, well, first, they actually trace it and they write the letters. And then they circle the picture that starts with that letter. And then they draw a picture of something that starts with that letter. So they’re really fun. And these are Valentine themes.

So the pictures and what they draw are Valentine themed and then just the borders and everything on the page are supervillain tiny. Those are cute. Okay, and then next we have our February language arts sub plans or homeschool lessons. Now these are the same resources, we just made a version originally these were sub plans, but then I was using these my own children at home, but I was like, but they’re marketed as sub plans. homeschoolers aren’t gonna want to use them. So we took up on we kind of tweaked the directions and everything to be for parents. So we have a parent version and a teacher version. Now. And even as I mentioned, they are sub plans, they’re ready to go for sub, but you can also pull activities from these and use them in your own classroom if you’re a teacher. So we have these really fun to fill in the blanks and fixing sentences resources, they have a Valentine’s Day themed Valentine’s Day theme, and even other February topics too, such as the Oscars President State Dental Health Month, Chinese New Year and more. So you kind of get some bonuses in that bundle too. But one in there that you can do whether or not you purchase anything is a writing prompt. So you can have students write about what this love really mean. And I feel like this is when you could really have kind of a classroom discussion about or discussion with your children, and then have the kids write about it.

Another fun activity we have included in those is a Valentine’s heart shaped board game with cards that correlate with the grade level that you’re using. So for younger kids, there’s like word practice. For older kids. There’s figurative language practice and parts of speech. So it really just depends on what grade level that you grab of those sub plans. We have them for pre K through sixth grades, and there’s the homeschool version too. Okay, next we have the Valentine’s Day spelling. We have these for grades first through sixth. So but what you can do whether or not you buy the bundle or use our resources, you can create a spelling list of Valentine’s Day themed words for your students such as Valentine’s Day, make sure they capitalize it Cupid capitalized. Love. Obviously, these words will depend on the leveling of the students that you teach. Then you can do a variety of fun activities with these words, and a lot of them are free and completely fun.

Be sure to check out episode 41 on the podcast if you want to do a Valentine’s Day spelling list because we have an episode called tennis spelling activities and games kids will love and you can do these with any word list. So you could come up with a list of Valentine’s Day words that will work for the students that you teach, and then do any of these 10 activities that I mentioned on that episode. Also, if you’re a Club member or you have our Valentine’s Day bundle we have ready to go spelling lists and activities included for you so that work is already done. Next we have writing prompts and now these will either be newly released by the time you’re listening to this or they’ll be ready soon and we’ll get them added to the bundle when they’re ready one of the prompts that is included in it and you can use this whether or not you decide to purchase a bundle or anything is an awesome opinion writing topic. And that opinion writing topic is which is better Cupid or the tooth fairy. And this will be a really fun one for kids to write about. I can guarantee it. Okay, next category I believe this is category number four.

Yes, it is, is Valentine’s Day craft ideas. Now for the first one is a mosaic heart art project. And this will captivate your students and just get them really excited for Valentine’s Day. They will complete the project by using one inch square pieces of construction paper and creating a mosaic heart using a black heart template which we have included. But really you could just like put a black heart on a word dot printed out and do this activity. And this is a great project to make use of extra construction paper scraps and can be done anytime throughout the month of February. So that is a super fun and easy simple craft idea that you can use with things that you already have. Another fun idea is Valentine’s Day themed directed drawings. Now kids love these and probably google or Go on TPT and find some we also have some really fun ones in that Valentine’s Day bundle and in wife teacher mommy club, we have them for lower and upper grades and on that note we even have a directed drawings monthly themed calendar so the kids can make this and give it to their parents or guardians as a Valentine gift. This is usually a Club exclusive but we also decided to include it in the Valentine’s Day bundle so be sure to check that out. Next we have Valentine’s Day math activities for our next category. One of the favorites and I’m surprised it took me more than 15 minutes into this recording this episode to get here is Valentine’s Day candy math. So you can do candy math with candy hearts, they can count them and sort them by color. If they’re younger grades, they can add them together be like, how many pinks Do you have? And how many blues Do you have? Add them together and see what you have. So addition, you can do subtraction, like if I have 10 candy hearts, I eat and then you have a meat three, how many are left, you can do multiplication with them. You can do division, you can do graphing, you can do probability, you can do fractions, comparing numbers, how many blues

Do you have versus how many pigs have the little alligator mouse cut out on they get to actually physically do it like it’s hands on. And it’s super fun. And we have all of these ready to go in our Valentine’s Day candy heart math activities. These are some of our best sellers during January and February. People just love them. There’s so much fun. We have these for a few holidays. And we always make sure we have a cute little hat on the crocodiles. So I believe I’m trying to remember the Valentine’s Day ones I think they have this cute little like headband has like antennae super cute. If I remember correctly, I don’t remember for sure. But then I know for St. Patrick’s Day it has like a leprechaun hat. And then as bunny ears for the jellybeans version, we just we’d like to make it super fun and themed for all of you just makes it fun for the kids. And for us to write next is ice by math. And this is one where you really do need to have the resource to utilize it. But I want to explain what they are because they are so so so so much fun. So when you have it, the kids will have a page that has a bunch of pictures scrambled up. So there’s like this clipart and it scrambled up on the page. And then underneath, there’s a picture of each of the little clipart. So for example, there’s a cupid, there’s a heart, there’s different items that are scrambled up in this picture. And they have to count and find all of each of them. So maybe they’re going in coloring all the Cupid’s paints, they can make sure they get all of them and write the number. So everybody starts with that. And then you have math problems that they use the ice by page as a key. So kind of like the candy math where you start at the same point where like you see how many you have of each number. But then the math problems you do with it depends on the leveling. So you can pick the right activity for your class like, Okay, our class is going to do addition, or my children are going to do addition or if you’re like me, like for example, I am homeschooling and have a first year third grader. So we’re going to do this activity together. But I’m going to have my third grader do one level, and I’m going to have my first grader do another and you can do that even within your classroom. So it’s a great way to differentiate, you’ll get all of them if you purchase the Valentine’s Day bundle, and you can access any of them if you’re in wife, teacher mommy club. Next we have our right circle draw again, we talked about the letter version. But we also have a Numbers version for practicing writing their numbers. So for that one, they practice writing the number, then they circle which picture has the correct number. And then they draw that number of things again, with a Valentine’s Day theme.

And then we also just like the language arts sub plans, we have language arts, we have math February theme to sub plans to we have them for pre K through sixth grades, we also have the homeschool versions for math for some ideas with that you couldn’t even do a word problem with Valentine’s Day names are in these and you could do this whether or not you you use this bundle. So here’s an example of a word problem you could do this Valentine’s Day theme. So the class makes Valentine’s they make 19 that are flower shaped and 15 that are heart shaped how many Valentine’s did the classmate next we have color by numbers. Those are so fun. We have them included in our bundle, you could also find them pretty much wherever those are pretty popular. We have some fun math riddles with a Valentine’s theme. So these are when children solve a math problem. And then for each answer, they have a letter that they write, and it solves the riddle. So the riddle they’re solving the answer of the riddle as they do the math problems. So those are really fun. And then the math themed board game in these is a cute mailbox that says You’ve got mail. It’s like red and it has a heart and as a Valentine going into it. And it will have grade level math questions for you there. Okay, the next category is Valentine’s Day reading activities. One of my favorites is our February reading passages. Now honestly, there’s no way to get around the amazingness of these passages for free, but they are included in the bundle they are in the club. These differentiated passages are really a favorite of our members and our customers. Because the way they work is within each grade level, we have three levels. So the lowest level has a heart very discreetly in the corner. The middle one has a diamond in the corner, and the high one has a star in the corner and we have professionally leveled these to make sure that they are appropriate for your grade level.

There’s no guessing or anything the students have to truly read what’s on the page right? We know this is very important with the science of reading and everything. So we make sure that they can have upper middle or higher level but in any of those levels, they’re using the same questions the passage is kept as similar as possible. So you can still discuss it as a class and students may not even realize that They’re reading at a different level. And then we even try to do this within the whole range. So we have these for kindergarten through sixth grades, obviously, the passage is very, very different for kindergarten and sixth grade. But within like smaller ranges, they’ll stay pretty similar. And you can even pull from other levels if you have a wider range of differentiation that is needed. Like for example, for me, I have a first grader and a third grader, they’re not going to do two from the same set. So if you are homeschooler, and you teach at home, but also many of you teachers who were in the classroom, you have all these wide gaps in the classroom that we talked about on a lot of previous episodes on the podcast. So we are here to help you bridge that gap to differentiate without it taking more time on your part.

Now the topics for the February passages are a Valentine letter, Leap Day fun facts, Gordon’s shadow Gordon is the groundhog for Groundhog Day. And then Dr. Williams and this is a story about when hospitals were segregated for Black History Month. So you can see we try to include a wide variety of topics for each month. Black history is always important not just in February, but it is a good reminder for us to you know, be intentional about have I taught Black History yet. If not, let’s get on that we want to have some great episodes and interviews about how we can teach black history and may not be in February, but like I said, that’s okay, because it can be taught any time of year. But in these February resources, you’ll also get some other holidays mixed in there too, Groundhog Day, Leap Year etc. So the sooner you grab this bundle or access these resources in the club, or even just purchase individual ones from our shot, the sooner you can make use of the other bonus topics to like Groundhog Day passage. You’ll want that at the very beginning of the month since Groundhog Day is February 2. Okay, these passages are awesome. If you have any questions, let our team know we’ll be happy to help.

Another reading activity I love is just finding Valentine’s Day books that you love. And one I love is somebody loves you Mr. Hatch, it is a classic that I always read and love as an adult reading to students or my children too, because this guy, Mr. Hatch, everyone thinks he just keeps to himself but it’s really that he thinks nobody cares about him. And then the story goes on when somebody does and people just see this immediate shift in him. So it talks about how US loving others can just have such an impact on other people. So it is a great book for Valentine’s Day. Now last but not least, our seventh category is classroom valentines for teachers to give their to their students or co workers or parents to give to their children. So we have a few of these resources are in that bundle. We have Valentine’s Day punny Karnes, we have another set of Valentine’s Day cards and gift cat gift tags. For some of the cute saints that are included you can use no matter what like make your own version. So fun. So one of the things is let’s stick together. And with that, you can give a bottle of glue or a glue stick. Another idea is you are a sweetheart and attach some candy hearts to it. Another idea I love teaching you very much that could be some gummy bears, some Teddy Grahams, $1, store, Teddy, etc. Or you could change it to I love teaching with you very much and get like a bigger teddy bear for one of your co workers. I think that would just be so fun. I think as grownups love stuffed animals more than we like to admit, right. And then another one is Valentine, you melt my heart. And in that one, we have a picture of like hot chocolate with marshmallows in it. So you could create that yourself and include like hot hot cocoa mix with it. So you could type these out on your own cards, make them super cute or say that time, get them ready to go inside the Valentine’s Day bundle with pretty much everything that I just mentioned already prepared for you.

Like, can you imagine how much time it would take to prepare all of this by yourself? It would take a lot. I mean, you definitely don’t need to, you can just take one or two ideas that you’ve gleaned from this, implement it in your classroom and your Valentine’s Day is going to be incredible. But if you want us to help you save that time, be sure to check out that Valentine’s Day bundle I loved that I got to tell you about here on the podcast first. It’s the best deal a huge price slash and if you’re listening a year or years later, it’s likely still available in our shop, we may have just increased the price since we’ve likely added more resources by this point. And we’ll continue to increase it as we add more resources to it. And of course if you’re in the cloud, but then you can go in and access so that’s the best way anyways. So I will link to that bundle in the show notes. But I hope you have an amazing incredible valentine’s day and week over the next couple of weeks I plan on having episodes about maternity leave. And teacher Sunday scaries. I’ve been looking at topics that you’ve been wanting to hear about and I’m planning ahead to make sure that we can meet your needs to help you live your best teacher life on this podcast. So make sure if you haven’t yet to hit subscribe and leave a review and send us a screenshot if you want to be entered in to win our ongoing podcast giveaway that I mentioned last week on the show. Until next week, we’ll talk then Buh bye. If you’re enjoying this podcast, be sure to hit subscribe so you don’t miss an episode. And if you’re ready to take the next step with me then you are going to love wife teacher mommy club.

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