In the coming weeks Valentines day will arrive and for a lot of us classrooms will be transforming into Valentines havens with continuous questions from our students about what day we will be handing out valentines cards to one another, and even if your classroom isn't handing out valentines cards to one another the topic of valentines likely will come up in your classroom.
I always enjoyed taking this time of year to explore friendships, role models, and ways to show love and kindness to one another through books and activities. One of the things I also liked to do was bring valentines theming into my centers, lessons, and classroom activities to bring excitement and engagement for students while still working through the standards we needed to hit. So I have decided to share the english language arts centers that I have used in my classroom over the years with all of you. My students have loved these themed centers over the years and have enjoyed the spin on the holiday while they are still addressing phonics, writing, and reading standards.
The centers and activities include CVC word building, phonemic awareness and spelling sensory bin, writing project and social emotional activity on what students love, sight word write the room which includes cards for fry words 1-100, real vs. nonsense word sort, and a word scramble activity that includes seasonal words or blanks for you to add the current skills and words your students are working on for phonics. In my classroom I set these centers up for the week. I used these centers during my small group reading time, students completed an average of 2 a day depending on the center with the exception of the writing project which normally took students a day or two of centers to complete. For the writing project students would work with my classroom paraprofessional or I to work through the brainstorming process and begin writing. I then would use their wonderful projects with the craft to display in the hallway or our classroom to 'decorate' for the season with students work.
Students working on the word scramble center in a small group.
The materials to create these centers for students were pretty simple. I purchased little plastic heart containers from Hobby Lobby a few years ago to put letter tiles in for word creation on the word scramble activity. Little plastic gem hearts to use as manipulative for elkonin boxes and sound manipulation in the CVC word building activity, and the items for the sensory bin which include easter grass in valentines colors, tinsel, heart gems, and tongs. All items are linked in the product to see exactly which products I used for the sensory bin.
Students completing the nonsense word sort.
Valentines can be a great time of fun in the classroom and a chance to focus on friendship, role models, and social emotional components but our standards are still there and still need to be reached. This is a great way to incorporate both standards and the fun of valentines day. Next week my favorite February books will be up on the blog and will include a variety of Valentines books as well as a freebie for you to use in your classroom!
Happy Ending of January and where ever you may be I hope you are staying warm!
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