Can You Feel the Love?

Don't you just love Valentine's Day? Sure the party at school will get a little silly since the kids are all sugared up but it's so fun to see them share valentines and spread the love. I found some cute ideas that I'm thinking of having my kiddos make and do for the holiday.

First, we joined up with the Teacher Blogger Exchange for the Valentine Exchange.

We were paired up with Mrs. Barrow's class in Alabama and sent them a load of valentines. I had them use some ideas that I found on Pinterest and other sites that make animals out of heart shapes. Here are a few examples we used to make ours (click on the pictures for the original links):

This book was a perfect accompaniment to our project:

Here is a book trailer on You Tube:

We also had our kids make a version of my project over on Family Fun that I posted about earlier. 

In our school we have "communities" that are five classrooms that open into a large space (we lovingly call it the family room). Every student in our community made a heart string and we hung them from the ceiling. I will post a picture so you can see what they look like.

I really love this idea from Made In The Shade In 2nd Grade:

I think I'll use her freebie template of that heart but I will have the students fill them out for those people in our school that need a little reminder of how special they are to us. Custodians, school secretaries, specialist teachers, paraprofessionals, cafeteria staff, volunteers, etc.

I also love these art projects from Mrs. T's First Grade Class:

To spread the love some more, I'm planning some posts with fun freebies that I found while cleaning up my user file at school. More to come later this week!