If you are struggling to come up with some fun classroom activities for Valentine’s Day then you are in the right place. This list will give you some great ideas and inspire you to think of your own.
A lot of these activities can also be done at home or in after-school clubs to keep children entertained.
1. Valentine’s Day ‘I Spy’
This is a fun and easy activity which is perfect for Valentine’s Day. It also helps children to practice counting and to recognise shapes.
Each Valentine’s themed image is shown a certain number of times on the page, and the children have to count them and write the number down next to the image at the bottom.
This activity comes with a free template but you can also design your own. This idea can be adapted and used for different holidays too!
2. ‘Pieces Of My Heart’ Drawing
This activity is really easy to set up – all you need is paper and colored pencils!
Each child will draw a large heart in the middle of their paper made up of jigsaw pieces (you might want to print off some of these hearts for smaller children or get some stencils).
Inside each jigsaw piece they will draw something that they love, and each one will be a piece of their heart.
This activity is a great way to get children to think about the things in their life they are grateful for, whether it is their friends, family, pets, possessions, hobbies, or anything else that makes them happy.
Each child will have their own, unique drawing to take home, or display in the classroom.
3. ‘What We Love About Our Class’ Collage
For this activity you will need a large piece of paper, smaller pieces of colored paper, scissors, glue sticks and colored pens or pencils.
Depending on the age of the children, they can create the entire collage themselves or you can help them with the trickier bits. On the large piece of paper, draw a big heart that takes up most of the page.
Leave a space at the top for the heading ‘What We Love About Our Class ‘.
With the smaller pieces of colored card, draw heart shapes and cut them out carefully with scissors. They need to be big enough to write a short message on. Each child can create their own paper heart, or you can create one for them.
On the heart they will write down something that they like about their class – it could be their friends, the teacher, the lessons, the games, the songs – whatever they think of.
All of the hearts are then glued to the paper inside the large heart. This makes a wonderful collage to display in the classroom and helps the children to have a positive attitude towards school.
4. Craft Hearts With Multimedia
Craft activities are a great way for children to express their creativity and individuality, and they can also improve fine motor skills in younger children.
For this activity you will need plenty of cardboard, a variety of different craft materials, glue, and glue brushes.
Each child will cut out a cardboard heart (or you can do it for them in advance if they are too young). On each table, set out pots of glue, brushes, and plenty of different materials.
You could use beads, buttons, tissue paper, felt – whatever craft supplies you have. You can also use natural materials like shells, petals, and leaves.
Each child will decorate their cardboard heart with whatever materials they choose and create their own design.
If you want to turn this into a hanging decoration, simply punch two holes at the top of each heart and thread some string through (do this before decorating).
5. Find Someone Who Loves What You Love
This is a great activity to get the children talking to people outside of their usual friendship group and to get them out of their seats. You can use the free template or create your own, and print one off for each child in the class.
Begin by getting each child to fill in their answer for each category – their favorite color, food, sport, animal etc. Try to make sure that they come up with their own answers and don’t copy each other.
For the second part of the activity, they will need to get up and walk around the classroom to find someone else who has the same favorite item as them, and write their name in the heart underneath their own answer.
This is best with bigger groups as they are more likely to find someone with the same answer as them. The children will probably get quite excitable and it will be a fun activity to break up the day.
To take this activity a step further, you can have a class discussion at the end. Try asking some of the children their answers, and who they found who had the same answer. You could also ask them why they chose that answer.
6. Color My Valentine
This is a simple coloring activity. All you need is one sheet per child and plenty of colored pencils. Each word has a corresponding color, and the children will need to color in each section of the heart according to that color.
At the end, they will have a completed heart with a lovely colored pattern. This activity helps with reading and recognising words, with colors, and with fine motor skills.
7. Cardboard Roll Heart Art
Making cardboard roll hearts gives you lots of options when it comes to activities. The hearts are easy to make, simply bend a cardboard roll until the end forms a heart shape. You can keep it in place with a staple if you want to.
This can then be used as a stencil by drawing around the end, or as a stamp by dipping the end in paint and pressing it on the page.
The children can create lots of overlapping hearts in different colors to make a wonderful piece of art to take home.
8. Heart Shaped Sun Catchers
This craft is easy to make but very effective and is a fun activity for children. You will need colored paper, contact paper, tissue paper and any other decorations that you want to use.
You will need to cut out heart shape borders using the colored paper – you can make them different sizes to make the most of the paper so there is no waste. You will then need to cut out tissue paper squares of different colors.
The easiest way to do this is to cut the paper into the strips first. If you have a guillotine it will make it much faster.
The children can stick the border down the contact paper, then fill it in with colored squares of tissue paper until all of the gaps are filled. They can also use extra decorations amongst the tissue paper.
Once finished the hearts can be cut out and stuck to the window where they will catch the sunlight. Alternatively, you can punch holes in them and string them together with thread to make bunting or hanging decorations.
9. Valentine’s Day Cards
Some teachers avoid making Valentine’s Day cards as a classroom activity because they don’t want any children to be left without a card.
However, you can solve this issue by having the children make cards that they can take home with them and give to a family member.
There are lots of different ideas for Valentine’s Day cards. A great idea is to make a bunch of flowers using handprints. Get the children to make handprints with paint onto large pieces of paper.
You can use various colors, but red, pinks and purples look great for valentine’s day. Once the handprints are dey they can be cut out. Stick them to the front of the card so that they look like a bunch of flowers.
The children can either draw the stems themselves, or create stems using craft materials like pipe cleaner or felt. They can then stick a ribbon to the stem to create a bow effect around the flowers.
The children can write their own message on the card, like ‘Happy Valentine’s Day’, and once everything is dry they can also write the inside of the card.
This gives them something to take home for their family and is a fun, engaging craft activity.
10. Musical Hearts
If you are looking for a more physical activity, then a game of musical hearts is perfect. To prepare, cut out different colored hearts out of paper that are big enough for one child at a time to stand on.
Clear the tables and chairs (or use the hall) and stick the hearts to the floor using sticky tack. Arrange them in a wide circle. Play music, and the children can run and dance in the middle of the circle.
When the music stops, they need to find a heart to stand on. As the game continues, gradually remove the hearts. Whoever is left not to stand on a heart is out of the game.
Summary
Themed activities are a great way to help children to learn about different holidays. They are also engaging and fun, and can be used to develop different skills.
Hi, my name is Helena Waters and I was a teacher for 40 years before retiring last year.
During my time as a teacher I dedicated the majority of it to making classrooms as fun as possible, with educational parties, fun activities, and low cost entertainment that made the children excited about learning.
I taught children of all ages, from preschoolers to high school students. Now, with the pandemic having uprooted everything that children once knew about school and learning, I think that the need for my ideas is bigger than ever.
That is why I created School Sparks, a place in which I can write down and share all of my ideas on how to get students excited about going to school again. I hope that you’ll find some useful within a school setting, even at home too!
