In classrooms all over the US, teachers are struggling to keep students engaged close to a holiday. Particularly difficult are early finishers who can be quite distracting to stragglers. These early finishers need to be kept not just busy, but challenged. Many teachers use centers or activity booklets for these bright minds. Holiday-themes like Valentine’s Day can make these booklets or centers more engaging. Now, you could just add some hearts to old worksheets, but that doesn’t make the worksheet or activity any more engaging. A better idea is to totally embrace the holiday and make the students think about words by using codes to spell Valentine related words; filling in letters of names in order to pass out cards; figuring out which two letter combinations come together to make a word, and more.
Classroom games are a great opportunity to reinforce a skill and keep students engaged. BINGO is perfect for vocabulary practice. Instead of calling out the words on the card, call out the definitions for those words. Another good skill to practice using BINGO cards is rhyming; call out words that rhyme with the words on the card. BINGO has students reading over all of the words on the sheet in search of the one called every time a new word is called. That’s a lot of practice reading these words, and the students are having fun doing it.
Creating these kind of activities can take hours or you can simply buy the product already made for your classroom. Below is a product I made that has these activities ready for you to print and use right away. Just click on the link below the image and you will be taken to Teachers Pay Teachers where you can purchase it.
Valentine’s Day Worksheets at Teachers Pay Teachers https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Valentines-Day-Worksheets-No-Prep-Literacy-Activities-7678928
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