Valentine’s Day Language Activities

Valentine’s Day is a good time to get kids thinking about expressing their appreciation for other people, and lots of language arts activities this time of year center on that. For younger kids, using heart shapes to reinforce basic concepts adds a lot of fun. Here are a bunch of Valentine’s Day language activities for kids of a range of ages.

Kids learning their sight words will enjoy these color by sight word coloring pages by 123 Homeschool 4 Me. Liz’s Early Learning Spot has a downloadable sight word board game with a heart theme.

Or you can make your sight words appear by magic by writing them in white crayon on this printable from Playdough to Plato and having the kids uncover and read the word (using marker or watercolor paint).

Teach Beside Me used paper hearts to teach about homonyms, synonyms and antonyms, and this is an easy one you can do yourself without any printables (unless you need a template for the heart shape). You could make this one into a scavenger hunt by hiding words around the room and then having kids match up the correct hearts.

Rhyming words are always fun for little kids, and this printable from Only Passionate Curiosity lets kids play with rhyming words in heart shapes. Here again you could sprinkle the words around the room and have kids collect ones that rhyme (the printable pack includes envelopes they can use to gather their rhymes in).

The jar of gratitude from Inspired Elementary is great to do as a classroom, or each child can fill their own jar with things they love and are thankful for.

Composition Classroom has a fun Valentine’s Day limerick/Mad Libs style poem printable that’s great for upper elementary and middle school kids. It’s a free download on Teachers Pay Teachers.

And this sweet printable from What Have I Learned Teaching gets kids to reflect on things they like about themselves.

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Teacher Appreciation Themes for Your School

I volunteer at my local library pulling holds for children’s books, and the other day someone was looking for Over and Under the Snow, a lovely picture book about animals that hibernate and those who don’t.

It reminded me that now would be a good time to talk about hibernation in the classroom, and what animals do to survive the winter more generally.

Did you know that technically only warm-blooded animals hibernate? When cold-blooded animals do it, it’s called brumation, and insects experience diapause. Whatever you call it, it’s a slowing down of bodily functions that allows animals to lower their body temperatures and slow their metabolism so much they don’t need to eat.

We Are Teachers has a great page about different animals that hibernate (or brumate, or diapause) and you can enter your email address to get a set of free worksheets perfect for middle grades. Education.com also has a downloadable worksheet about hibernation, and you can find many more (including the migrate or hibernate worksheet above) from Worksheeto.

Little Bins for Little Hands has a great free printable pack about hibernation and hibernating animals. There’s a good list of animals that hibernate in the post, as well as some FAQs about hibernation.

Teaching 2 and 3 Year Olds has lots of great ideas for planning a hibernation theme, including making a cave in the classroom, painting on ice, and lots of ideas for dramatic play, writing and other activities (and there are lots of freebies linked there).

Little ones will love these bear hibernation hat printables form Books and Giggles that include facts about hibernation.

STEMHax has collected a bunch of lesson planning resources about animals in winter, based on the book Animals in Winter. You’ll find links to videos about different animals featured in the book that you can use when talking about the book or more broadly in a winter animal unit study.

The Wolfe Pack Den has a free printable unit study and ideas for books to read and other things to do (with a particular emphasis on hedgehogs, if you’re into that).

And to bring in one more book recommendation from when my girl was little, Bear Snores On is another fun one, and you can read that one and bring out all your fun bear activities, like this adorable hibernating bear craft from Krokotak.

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