Tired of the same old Valentine’s Day for your kids? Why not make this Valentine’s Day a new exciting experience for your children by incorporating fun literacy activities to do with your kids throughout the day!
Here are some kid-friendly literacy activities for you to try.
1. Homemade Valentine’s
Instead of buying pre-made valentines, have your children write their own Valentine’s Day cards. They could send a thoughtful Valentine to a parent or grandparent that uses more descriptive adjectives and complex words that explain why they love them. These also extend to their classmates, siblings and friends! Remember, homemade cards ALWAYS mean more to the recipient than store-bought Valentines.
2. Writing poetry for Valentine’s Day
The classic poem “roses are red, violets are blue, sugar is sweet and so are you…” can be easily adapted to teach kids about rhyming. The last two phrases can be re-written with just about anything that rhymes with blue. You can help your kids write their own Valentine’s Day poetry to give to their friends and family.
3. Love-themed word games
This one is surprisingly easy: simply use the letters from your Scrabble game to arrange love messages – you can even use square bits of paper to substitute for Scrabble pieces. You can make up your own rules for what to do with the letters. For example you could set a timer and try to assemble 5 words that begin with the letter “L” for “love” or “V” for valentine within the allotted time. You could also work together to use all of the letters to build a crossword of words that are all connected.
4. I “LOVE” the alphabet
Children who know their ABC’s and have a basic understanding of letter sounds will love this entry. The way to play is to say a word that begins with the letter “a.” For a Valentine’s Day theme you could start the game with the word “adore” and the next person could say “beautiful” then “cute,” “darling,” “envelope,” “friends,” etc. See if you can make it all the way to the letter “z” and if you need to get creative and stretch the rules a bit, that’s okay! The letter “x” can be a difficult one, but you could use the symbol for hugs and kisses “xoxo,” which is perfect for Valentine’s Day! To make the game more complex you can also repeat all of the previous words from “a” up to the current word. This causes kids to not only be creative with words but also remember up to 26 words in a row!
5. First Letter, Last Letter (Valentine’s Day themed)
This activity is simple, and the best part? Like entry 4, it does not require any props or pieces. The game starts when someone says a word related to Valentine’s Day. The next person has to say a love related word that begins with the last letter of that word. For example if the game begins with the word “kiss” then next word could be “swoon” and then next word could be “nice” and so on. This literacy activity is great for kids in grade 3 and up, or who can read and are comfortable spelling words on their own.
Valentine’s Day doesn’t just have to be about candy, it can be a wonderful opportunity to work with words and even expand your children’s vocabularies! Hopefully, you can try out some of these fun literacy activities this Valentine’s Day!
