This Valentine’s Day you can incorporate fun literacy activities to do with your kids throughout the day. 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. Here are some fun literacy activities for you to try with your kids.
Fun literacy activities to help kids with writing and rhyming
Valentine’s Day is a perfect opportunity to practice writing skills. Encourage your kids to do fun writing exercises at home. They could send a love letter to a parent or grandparent that uses lots of descriptive words that explain why they love them. Here are two ideas for fun literacy activities you can do at home.
1. Homemade valentines for classmates
Instead of buying pre-made valentines for your child to pass out to their classmates, they can write their own valentines cards. For young children you can write an example valentine for them to copy. This is good practice for properly forming letters and words especially since they can practice writing the same phrase many times. For students who are homeschooled, they can write valentines for friends and family members.
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. The website gigglepoetry.com shows some more ways to re-write this poem using different colors and words that rhyme with those colors.
Love themed word games are fun literacy activities to do on Valentine’s Day
Use the letters from your Scrabble game to arrange love messages. 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. You could try to include at least 10 love related words in your puzzle.
Fun literacy activities to do in the car
Make Valentine’s Day an extra special day for your family. To incorporate some learning into your day you can use the time spent driving in the car to play some fun literacy activities together. Try these out on the way to and from school or on your way to the grocery store. They are quick, simple and most importantly are good for your brain!
1. I “LOVE” the alphabet
Children who know their ABC’s and have a basic understanding of letter sounds can play this game while riding in the car. The way to play this game 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 too! 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!
2. First letter, last letter (Valentine’s Day themed)
This activity is simple and does not require you to use any props or game pieces, so it’s perfect for playing in the car. 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.
Hopefully you can try out some of these fun literacy activities this Valentine’s Day. Does your family have any ways to make holidays like Valentine’s Day more educational? If you would like to share other ideas for ways to fill Valentine’s Day with learning opportunities please leave a comment below. Happy Valentine’s Day!
