Spreading the Love this Valentine's Day

When it comes to Valentine's Day in the classroom, this girl is allll about spreading the love! I find as many ways as possible to incorporate all things red and pink with hearts all over into our February activities. :) I'm sharing some of my favorite Valentine's Day activities. Also, it gets better! I'm excited to be teaming up with CustomInk to be spreading the love to YOU by giving out 5 teacher "teach" tees at the end of this post! One is for you to keep and 4 are for you to spread the love to all your teacher besties! Who doesn't love a good teacher tee?!

This post contains affiliate links for your shopping convenience. 

On Valentine's Day, we celebrate with a "party" by reading aloud two books from the "Love Monster" series by Rachel Bright.


Then we decorate "love monsters" of our own using the adorable templates from The Teacher Wife. You can find them in Lindsey's store here.

You can find Love Monster here and Love Monster and the Perfect Present here. 

I am so excited to be adding these two to my Love Monster collection this year too!

You can find Love Monster and the Last Chocolate here and Love Monster and the Scary Something here. 

 
And how about this cutie?! If you're anything like me, you'll want to get this Love Monster to join in on the fun! You can find this sweet guy here!

Looking to continue the Love Monster fun?! Grab this math workshop center freebie for you to use with your firsties. We have used them as both a task card center and even a "math around the room! Get those little feet up and moving as much as possible!

It includes two differentiated options and a recording sheet. One is adding two digit numbers and the other is adding groups of tens. This will help you best meet the needs of your students in math workshop.

You can download it for free in my TpT shop here.

I downloaded this adorable freebie from The Kindergarten Connection. She used it as an addition mat, along with erasers from the Target dollar spot. Since we have been working on place value and adding two digit numbers, I differentiated for my firsties! We used double dice to roll two two-digit numbers. Then we built the numbers with base ten blocks and add them to find the sum. I printed the center on cardstock and placed them in sleeve protectors.

 You can find the jumbo double dice here, neon cardstock here and sleeve protectors here.
You can also download the template from The Kindergarten connection here.

If you're looking for some more math centers, Cara over at The First Grade Parade shared the perfect candy heart hands on math freebie!

This is perfect to reinforce 1 to 1 correspondence and addition while engaging our learners! They get such a kick out of the little messages too. Man have they sure changed since my day... "text me" and "tweet me" hahah! 

If your school has a food policy, you can supplement with foam "candy hearts" found here.  

Cara's printables are perfect to be used with the fortune cookie erasers found at the Target Dollar spot. I can't wait to type up messages and put them inside for another math comparing number center! 

You can find her Valentine's Day printables here. 

  

Moving to one of my favorite parts of my classroom! I always like to surprise my students with a new bookshelf as we begin a new theme or celebrate an upcoming holiday! It truly instills their love of reading and learning.

We have specific bookshelf routines so that it stays neat and organized. While I do allow my students to read the books off the shelf, I encourage them to take extra special care of them. The shelf has a mix of books they have seen before in the Valentine's Day theme book bin in our library, as well as new books that are kept under my reading bench. Students use the shelf as an early finisher activity and therefore aren't allow to put those books in their books bins during the time that they are on the shelf. I also like to keep some books separate for when I do my read alouds and lessons during shared reading.

If you're looking for ways to build up your shelf, I often use my points from Scholastic Reading Club and sales on Amazon to build up my library. 

I love the way that Valentine's Day ties into Kindness Week so perfectly. Its important to take the time to think and reflect on all the things that "fill our hearts." After reading the inspirational "Pete the Cat's Groovy Guide to Love," we do this adorable craftivity by Anna over at Crazy for First Grade.

You can find the craftivity here and the book here.

In reader's workshop we have be practicing to make connections. This is perfect to do with books in a series because your students truly have a good sense of the character. I love the Crankenstein series and found this adorable "Cranky Franky" freebie from Stephanie over at Falling in First. You can find them here.

 The link in her site include many different options for you to differentiate for your kiddos.

My student intern led this lesson and provided my students with a sample model Franky craft. The students simply followed the model and assembled the precut pieces.

If you're looking to add these to your collection you can find Crankenstein here and A Crankenstein Valentine here.

Why do you do love teaching? I've teamed up with CustomInk to host a teacher tee giveaway- 1 for your and 4 for you to share with your team or teacher besties! In order to enter the giveaway, you'll have to complete all entries in the Rafflecopter. Please note that you can visit my Instgram in order to see the image for you to repost and tag @Customink and @firstgrade_made . Good luck!
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