Valentine's Day

I ran most of the morning activities today. We did a heart greeting for Valentine’s Day and an activity with candy hearts. I gave every student a candy heart and they had to quietly walk around giving each other little peeks of their hearts. They had to be able to find friends that had the same color hearts. We ended when everyone was in a group. It was a good, quick, and quiet activity that went really well. The greeting had the students make a heart shape with their hands and greet each other by saying “Happy Valentine’s Day.”

After morning meeting, we did words of the week and chunk of the week. I used my own poem for chunk of the week (-and), but I am looking forward to the next chunk because we have a song for it again. I like the songs better than the poems because using poems make it seem too similar to the weekly poetry lessons.

We went to lunch after 3 rounds of Daily 5 activities. I sat in on my CT’s guided reading groups again and I think I will pull yellow group for the first time tomorrow to start our Magic Treehouse book. After lunch we did a quick writing activity where the kids wrote about their favorite things about Valentine’s Day, people they love, things they love, etc. We stapled them into mini books that they could take home.

Finally, it was time for the Valentine’s Day festivities. We started with snack and a read-aloud book about Valentine’s Day. Then, one at a time, students were called to get their boxes and valentines. One table at a time gave out their cards. When that was finished, we had them pack up and clean up so we could go to another classroom where the grade was having their ice cream, party. We were very close to running out of ice cream, but we made it, grabbing a few extra ice cream cups from the cafeteria. We gave them choices of toppings, chocolate syrup, and whipped cream. They watched Charlie Brown’s Valentine’s Day and enjoyed their ice cream. Luckily, after that was recess and gym and then dismissal. That gave them time to burn off the extra energy from the party before they went home. Overall, it was a fun day and the class was better than expected.