Valentine’s Day is next week and while it always feels a little commercial and sometimes a bit exhausting for me (so much red, pink, and glitter everywhere!), it is a fun moment to get us through gray February. Also, it’s an excuse to celebrate kindness, caring for others, your classroom community, and eat chocolate! Every year, my students would bring me dark chocolate as they know from my shares that is what I prefer, and it was always a sweet moment of being truly seen and appreciated.

We wrote about Valentine's Day last year, specifically talking about our investigation of the holiday and what our students came up with as well as a few read alouds.

One new read aloud that I am very excited about is Your One and Only Heart by Rajani LaRocca, Illustrated by Lauren Paige Conrad (cover photo; from this list) - always love anything by Dr. Rajani LaRocca and it’s a great STEM connection. However, it won’t be out in time for this year’s Valentine’s Day, but it’s a good one to keep in mind for next year and just learning and reading in general.

Another book that is a perfect Valentine’s Day and everyday read aloud is How We Eat by by Shuli de la Fuente-Lau (it’s book number 5 in the We Are Little Feminists series). My 3 year old loves this book and we read it all the time. Food is love, and as the book says, “eating is close to the heart.” so it’s a great Valentine’s Day connection and a way for students to think about different ways of eating and how we each have our own food that means love to us. This could be a lovely share and writing/reflection activity.

Another heart activity is to think about what is close to our heart(s) for writing inspiration. I often do this at the beginning of the school year as part of setting up our Writer’s Notebooks, but it’s a nice activity (or a nice re-do or refresh) for anytime. Students can create their own hearts, color and decorate them, and then write down things that are close to their heart that might help them find inspiration when thinking about what to write about.

Of course, it’s always nice to make cards for others on Valentine’s Day. One year, I made cards for nursing home residents with my class through the DC Public Library, but even if you don’t live in DC or they are not running the program this year, it would be relatively easy to organize something like this on your own too. Or think of adults in the building who don’t always get appreciation from others (librarians, custodians, receptionists, IT, cafeteria staff, and more).

With so much tragic news occuring lately, I was remembering when we tried to send some love and support to a community that was having a hard time. You can read about it and see examples with this post: Writing Postcards for Charlottesville with 3rd Graders). Thinking of so many communities who might appreciate a little lift today.

However you celebrate Valentine's Day (or choose not to), remember that we are halfway through February and that much closer to spring. Happy Valentine’s Day to all of the teachers!

Congratulations to teachers who have made it halfway through February! It is always a feat of endurance, but even more so this year. Last year, my co-teacher and I decided to find a way for students to exchange cards (no food) despite all of the challenges as we felt that they needed the joy and celebration. We were back in person, but only for half days, and the adults at our school had just started to get vaccinated. So we had the students bring in cards earlier in the week, distribute them in bags they decorated, and then had the bags “quarantine” so we would all feel comfortable touching them. This was before the revelations about how COVID actually spreads and we wanted to bring some connection and fun to a very odd school year. Of course, we said no food, and specified that while bringing cards was optional, you must bring one for everyone if you are going to bring them in.

Even if exchanging cards doesn’t work for you or your class, there are many different ways you can approach Valentine’s Day. We’ve included some resources below with a list of possible read alouds. We’ve also written cards for seniors (through DC Public Library) and focused on writing cards for people in our school community that might not get a lot of cards on Valentine’s Day as they aren’t part of a class. I’ve had students make cards for someone at home or share appreciations about classmates.

One of my favorite memories of Valentine’s Day at school, however, is when Gabby and I gave our 5th graders some Valentine’s Day commercials to peruse with a few different lenses. Students worked in groups to investigate and share their observations and questions, and then we shared out as a class. The students had a lot to say about the commercials (this was in 2014 so maybe/hopefully commercials nowadays would have more representation?) and were especially upset that no one in the commercials was wearing glasses. I sometimes wear glasses and my students took the exclusion of glasses from the commercials very personally on my behalf! It was unexpected and very hard not to laugh as you truly never know what students will come up with.

We started by asking students what they think of when they think about Valentine’s Day. Students shared different associations and traditions. Then, we put students into small groups and gave them a tracking table to record observations and questions (pictured above). Each group watched the same 4 commercials, but did an in-depth analysis of one commercial through the lens of gender, sexuality, racial or ethnic representation, and socio-economic status. We taught into some of these terms earlier in the school year and in general, made sure students knew what they were investigating.

Here are the commercials we used:

FTD (flowers) - we weren’t able to find a working link to the commercial we used in the past, so here is another example.
Jewelry (Pandora) - again, we weren’t able to find a working link to the original commercial we used, but here is another example.
Chocolate (Russell Stover)
Verizon

In addition to the frustration over no one wearing glasses, students had A LOT to say. They felt that the commercials depicted women as “greedy” because they “just wanted people to buy things for them” and that everyone had to have a relationship a certain way even though there are so many ways to celebrate Valentine’s Day or care about someone. Students also noticed that everyone in the commercials was white, straight, and seemed to have a lot of money or at least not be at all worried about money. We also pushed them to think about why this messaging matters or what impact it might have outside of Valentine’s Day. Students had a lot of ideas and reflections and many made personal connections with feeling alienated or not seeing themselves or their families represented.

Read Alouds:

Both of these could be combined with a writing exercise asking students to write/create in answer to the prompt what is love? Or what does love mean to you?

Love by Sophia by Jim Averbeck

Love by Matt de la Pena

Other Resources:

The Dark Origins of Valentine's Day: NPR (this is definitely a read for adults)

Resources for Learning about Empathy on Valentine's Day: Edutopia

Resources for Teaching About Love: Rethinking Schools

Happy Valentine’s Day (or halfway through February!) to all of you - however you choose to celebrate, or not. We know you show love to students every single day in so many different ways. Please share any other ideas you have for activities, investigations, read alouds, or more.

Valentine's Day 2023

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