Valentine's Day Project

Happy 2017! 

I hope you all are having a great start to your year! So far, the past 6 days have been great and I just know this year is going to be amazing! 

I wanted to share something with you today that is a super amazing idea for Valentine's Day! I have been doing it for 6 years and every year the kids just love it! I begin right away after winter break to give students enough time to get started!

Click HERE to read my blog post from a few years ago. There's also a link in there to another blog post I did awhile back. I am doing things a little different this year so you will want to keep on reading:)

I bring you, the Valentine's Day Compliment Project!

How this project works:

Each student's name is placed in the Valentine envelope!

I will pull a name out each day and write it on the pink chalk board.

This person gets to wear the heart Emoji on their lanyard.

For homework that night, students will write a thoughtful compliment about that person. When they have their own name, I still have students write a compliment about themselves. Most of the time, this is the hardest one to do! 

I used to have students hand write it, but this year I made a Google Doc for my students to use nightly. If students can't get to their Drive for some reason, they can write it on lined paper and type it in their doc first thing in the morning. 

After all students and myself had their name pulled out, I will print out the compliments, organize them by student and we will begin the fun part!

Each student will pull another student's name out of a bucket. So let's say George pulls out Bailey's name. George will take all of Bailey's compliments and create a poster for Bailey. Over the years, I have had parents bring in fun materials to decorate the posters. 

(this was from a few years ago)

I will be sending a note home again the first day back next week asking for all sorts of fun decorating materials. 

BUT, this year instead of a poster, I am going to use the blank books I bought a few years ago (I can't believe I never used them) from Target's Dollar Spot. I am super excited about this change and I think my students will like it too! 

We take almost the whole day to focus on creating these posters! The students really put time, effort, and love into their designs. 

When everyone is done, we have snacks, drinks, and present each other with their posters. So George would get up and present Bailey with her poster. 

Every.single.year this has been a huge hit in my classroom. I apologize to my last years class for not doing it. I really wish I did! IMHO...this is WAY better than getting those paper Valentine Cards!

My super cute second grade girls from 13/14

I have the girl on the left with the green tank top this year again in 5th! I also had her in 3rd;)

My awesome 3rd grade class from 12/13! I sure miss them all!

I promise you, if you do this project, you won't regret it! 

I have made two files for you to download for free!

A PDF with parent notes, student compliment handouts, and examples. I also added an editable PowerPoint so you can make the note fit for your classroom needs! 

Click HERE to download it via Google Drive!

Thanks for sticking around while I haven't been blogging or creating. I really do appreciate and love you all! You are amazing!

Valentine's Day Compliment Project!

Yesterday we had my 4th annual Valentine's Day Compliment Project! And I must say, the kids LOVED it once again! I don't think I will ever go back to traditional Valentine Cards! This project is more meaningful, creative, and students will hang on to it for a very long time instead of just throwing those silly little cards away with a name on it. 

If you want to read about my blog post from last year, just click HERE!

The first thing my kids do is write compliments about each person in the classroom. I give them a good 5 weeks to do this at home. I have a simple template they use to do this on. 

I gather all the compliments from each student and we sort them. So all the compliments the kids wrote about Ben, would go in one bag! 

Then the day of the project, each student picks a bag from the bucket. It can't be their own. So let's say James picked Connie's bag. James would make a poster for Connie using her compliments!

They each get a white sheet of poster board. Their first job was to write the person's name in the middle. Next was to glue on the compliments. 

Then student's got to decorate the posters!

Parents donate fun Valentine Crafts to make this project a success! We had A LOT this year!

And at the end, we shared the posters and presented them to the person we made them for! 

This has to be one of my favorite classroom projects ever! It would even be a great end of the year project!

What did you do for VDay in your class?

MLK update and a Rosa Parks Activity:)

My students loved learning about Marin Luther King!

To check their understanding, I posted two questions on my classroom blog

During our tech time, every student was able to answer both questions! I was so happy with their answers!

Here are a few:)

I LOVE it!

We started a voice thread too with their dreams, just like Martin had! I will share that when we are done!

Today we also did a little learning about Rosa Parks. My kids showed great interest in her when they heard about her and the bus boycott when learning about MLK. 

We watched a BrainPop video

We made a chart about what we learned

I found this free bus craft! 

Students then make a Rosa Parks book out of it. 

They turned out really cute! 

Great last minute Friday activity that was completely inquiry based! I love it when they decide what they want to learn!

Any big plans this weekend? Me...RELAX and CATCH UP! I am looking forward to this 3 day weekend! Bring it on!

In the mean time, I will be back this weekend with this:) I can't wait to show it to you all!

Our Friend Martain~an MLK Unit, FB Blog Hop, and Educents Shout Out

Happy Friday Friends!

Any big plans over the weekend? I realllllyyy have to catch up on some school stuff since I go back Monday...but at least my kids don't come back until Wednesday:)

I know one thing I will be adding to my lesson plans over the next few weeks is my Martain Luther King unit!

This unit is to go with the movie Our Friend Martin

This unit includes:

10 questions from the movie

posters for each question

response sheet with an answer key

2 time traveling writing activities

A character traits activity

Change Activity-how the main character Miles in the movie changed from the beginning to the end

BIG words Map for each of Dr. King's big words

I have a dream speech bubble activity

Don't have the movie....no problem! You can watch it on YouTube! 

My kids have always loved watching this movie!

My unit is available in both of my stores!

Want to win one for free? Just leave a comment and I will pick a winner tomorrow!

Speaking of tomorrow...some pretty spectacular second grade teachers are doing something for YOU!

You won't want to miss it...check back tomorrow bright and early!

Have you picked this Educents Bundle up yet???

If you haven't...you really should!

Cynthia from My Kind of Teaching has an awesome geometry unit!

I really love and appreciate the

-I can posters

-essential question posters

-pre and post test

and 

-anchor charts

Those help SO much when helping students understand WHAT it is they are learning and WHY they are learning it.  

Games include

-scoot-

-task cards-

-drawing shapes activities-

and I just LOVE the differentiated lesson plan activities!

I just can't say enough about this unit!

Time is now to grab this awesome bundle. You can get this unit, plus 21 others for $29.99

Have a great weekend!!!

Valentine's Day Project-they LOVED it:)

Over the past 3 years I have done the same poster project for Valentine's Day. It is SO much fun and could easily be a great end of the year project too! After the first year I did this the parents and the students told me how much it meant to them. Also, some students I had 3 years ago still have their posters! Let me show you what I am talking about:)

As soon as we got back from Winter Break (January 3rd), I told the students about this Valentine's Day project and that they are not to go out and buy Valentine Cards. They always get so sad at this point! They don't realize what I have them do is a lot more fun!

I give each student a bag of index cards and a class list. They were to write a compliment about each student in the class. When they were all done, they needed to turn the cards back in to me. Then I separated the cards into a new bag. One bag for each student. So every student had 24 compliments.

Then today was the fun part! I put all the bags into a a bucket. Each student pulled one bag out, and it couldn't be their own bag.  So Ben pulled out Izzy's name and created a poster for Izzy. They had 2 hours to decorate a poster for that person using all the compliments and...this fun stuff 

Stickers, foam shapes, paper, stamps...you name it, it was there. I always ask for donations and have had a TON left over from year to year!

Their first set of instructions was to write the person's name somewhere on the poster and the glue the compliment cards on. 

Once all the cards and name was on the poster, they could start decorating. It was SO awesome to see how each poster was different. How creative these kids got! 

Here are some pictures of them starting to decorate

 

 

 Here are some final posters

I also made a poster for one student and a student made one for me!

Students were very secretive about who they did because it wasn't until the afternoon when we were going to present them.  

During the afternoon, we played bingo, enjoyed from friendship fruit salad, veggies and dip, cheese and crackers, and cookies. Once the parents got there every student presented the person their poster they made for them! 

Here is my poster that was presented to me:)

   

At the end I had a parent take our pictures holding the posters! Don't mind the 3 year old twins in the front. Those are siblings of a student:)

  

I am one tired teacher today! SO glad tomorrow is a teacher workday! Best Idea ever! haha!

Enjoy your Valentine's Day!