Valentine's Day is just a few short days away! Can you believe it? If you are anything like me and are still trying to figure out how to add a little Valentine's Day spirit into your lessons, be sure to stop by Mrs. Lee's Kindergarten. Julie put together a bunch of great ideas you could easily incorporate! Here are just a couple.

Counting Hearts

Materials Needed:

• Pre-cut hearts from construction paper
• Bingo paint dotters
• Pre-cut sentence strips
• Glue
• Yarn
• Paper clips

Provide each of your students with a pre-cut heart shape (be sure the hearts are different sizes). Then have your students paint the hearts with Valentine's Day colors (red, pink, white or purple). Julie recommends using bingo-dot painters. So much easier (and less messy) than paint and brushes!

Once the hearts are dry, have your students measure the size of their hearts using cubes. They can then complete the provided sentence with the number of cubes (pre-print the simple sentence "My heart is ____ cubes wide" and cut a strip for each student). Add each child's name to their heart and string from your classroom ceiling for a festive Valentine's Day display!

Heart Addition

Create a cute way to practice addition skills for Valentine's Day. All you have to do is cut several hearts from construction paper and draw a jagged line down the middle. It might be a good idea to laminate the hearts to withstand the repeated use! Then place a certain number of objects on each side of the heart (make sure the number of objects differs between each heart).

Then create a simple worksheet (as shown above) that your kiddos can use to record their findings (you may want to number the hearts to correspond with the worksheet so you can easily check their work). They can fill in each side of the jagged heart with the number of objects displayed and then add the numbers together. Easy peasy! And what a great way to practice simple addition skills!