Staff Valentines: An Act of Kindness

Valentines Day is quickly approaching. I love the little notes and cards my students make for me. I’ve had one in particular hanging by wardrobe for seven years now. This year, my class will be spreading kindness across the school by making valentines for the entire staff! It’s been a few years since I’ve done this, and I’m excited to revisit the idea.

First, I get a current staff list from the office to make sure I don’t leave anyone out! From specialists to custodians, cafeteria helpers to gen. ed. classroom teachers, everyone goes on the list! Then I make a Word Doc for the SMARTBoard so that we can all read it easily from around the room. I make sure there’s enough space next to each staff member’s name for me to write the name of the student who chooses to make a valentine for that person. (This helps kids with spelling and provides me with a way to keep track of who’s working on what.) As students pick various teachers, I try to look for connections (She was my sister’s fourth grade teacher! I go to his classroom for reading!) to make the valentines as meaningful as possible. Students trace and cut out hearts using construction paper, write a message and decorate the valentines. Then it’s time to deliver some smiles!

All You Need is Love (And a Break From Testing!)

Whew! January is finally over and we couldn’t be happier. The month was full of tests, tests, and more tests! (Erin loves data and all the charts and tables that come along with it and even she is thrilled that it’s over!) Now that February is here we are celebrating with a new bulletin board.

The crafty part is pretty simple. We used hand and heart patterns. The students cut out the hands and folded two fingers down to make the sign for “I love you.” They did not crease the paper, which created a rounded, more natural look for the fingers. Then they cut out the hearts, glued them onto the hands and wrote about something that they love. We even used this as an opportunity to practice working on synonyms and ended up with sentences with words like “cherish,” “treasure,” and “appreciate.”

Next, we made our class poem centerpiece using this writing frame.

The kids threw out ideas and we worked together to chose the ones we thought sounded amazing. We even combined ideas. To make the board interactive we made individual copies of our writing frame to hang in a pocket. We posted quick and easy instructions on the outside of the pocket. Any student or staff member in our school can take a copy, compose a poem, and return it to us. Then, we’ll hang the poems all around the board, spreading love and poetry for all to see. It’s been an inspiring way to move on from testing. 

**On a quick side note, our team came up with a creative idea that I LOVED. After we hung up the poem on our white poster board heart we felt it was entirely too plain. We thought that adding polka dots could make it cuter but debated on what color would be best so it wouldn’t clash with the other things on our board. We ended up using…. leftover border! We used a round craft punch to make circles that matched the board perfectly. Now this may be old news to some, but I think it’s brilliant!

Can't Miss February Books

As you are pulling out your books for February, consider adding these to your list. Some are endearing, others are inspirational and several are quite silly. Plus we’ve included some ideas for reading follow-up. Let us know if you have some good February books we should be sharing with our classes!

Life is Like a Box of. . .

I brought in a large heart shaped box of chocolates and asked my students to guess what was inside. Of course they guessed chocolates, but I wanted them to be more specific. So they threw out different flavor ideas. I told them we were each going to take a chocolate and eat it without knowing what was inside. (Be sure to check for allergies first!) Everyone was surprised by the caramel or strawberry or coconut that greeted them when they bit down. Using the quote from Forest Gump, I introduced the idea that just like a box of chocolates, life is unpredictable. They thought it was funny that I compared chocolate to life. Then I said, “Life is like a box of barbeque potato chips - sometimes spicy and always really good.”

I gave each student one side of an empty holiday card box or the box lid (I collected these from my school staff after the holidays) and asked them to think of what life was like for them. Each student decorated the inside of their box with handmade pictures of the items they chose. Then they wrote their answers on accompanying index cards.

We hung everything on a bulletin board titled: “Life is like a box of …” One student had just returned from his uncle’s funeral. He wrote, “Life is like a box of tears, happy and sad.” Another student wrote, “Life is like a box of cupcakes, sweet and special.” We ate the rest of the chocolates and then I glued brown pom-poms and a school picture of each of my students in the empty spaces within the box. This went in the middle of our board.