Last year, I wrote about Valentine’s Day in 5th Grade on the collaborative blog I am a part of. As I prepare for this year, I realized there are two things I realized I had forgot to mention. These are some of my favorite activities to plan out and use, so I can’t believe I forgot them {insert face palm!}
NO PARTY
First, to piggyback off the post linked, we DON’T have a Valentine’s Day party in 5th grade. Instead, we spend the day (or close to it) giving back to our community and caring for others, by going to Feed My Starving Children and packing meals. Since we started this, students have commented that this is one of their favorite memories from 5th grade.
MATH-SOLVE and COLOR
Every month my students spend a math class practicing their multiplication facts and order of operations by completing a Solve and Color. This is a powerpoint that is set to transition automatically and each slide has the students solving an expression. The students then color in the corresponding “answer” rectangle with the correct color, thus creating a picture. They love to try and guess what the picture is going to be!
CLASSROOM COMMUNITY-COMPLIMENT or KINDNESS BOOKS
In this post I wrote about Stocking Stuffers done in December to increase the positive classroom community we have worked on through morning meetings and such. In February, I like to continue the trend by having students complete a compliment book for each student in class.
I set this up like a scoot…students decorate and write their name on the cover. Once we’re ready, I set a time, and students move to their neighbors seat and write a compliment or kind message to that student. We continue until everyone has written in each others. This can take a couple of days to complete. We, of course, discuss what a genuine compliment or note of kindness is beforehand, and I give student some time to process or think about they may want to write before jumping into the activity.
After all my students have written in each other’s, I collect them and spend a few days writing my own notes to students.
I then put these in students’ Valentines Bags for them to read! They love seeing what others have to say about them, and many will flip to the back page to see what I wrote!
I just uploaded this as a new product on TpT, so let me know what you think :o)
A few other FREE products I have found on TpT:
Crankenstein Antonym Activity
Types of Sentences Scoot
If you have any other great products (free or paid!) that I should be using in my 5th grade classroom for February and Valentine’s Day, please let me know in the comments. I love supporting other teacher-authors and bringing products into my classroom!
