This Valentine’s idea is adapted from one by Teachnet Contributor, Robin Larsen.
You can combine an art lesson with a Valentine’s bulletin board with family participation with creative writing while there’s still time before February 14.
Start by cutting hearts out of heavy paper. Older grades can find their own cardboard or heavy paper at home; do this at school for younger grades, and send them home in zip-lock bags.
The art part is having them get creative in gluing on decorations, and anything goes. Candy, hair, confetti, spices, small toys, cloth, the TV remote control – there should be no limit to what they dream up. To jumpstart the creative process, make your own ahead of time. You might want them to work with parents, but most of all, letting them have fun will jump-start their creative processes.
Returned with their Valentine should be a paragraph describing their work. Turn this into a creative writing exercise of your choosing, but one suggestion is to have them put their hearts on the bulletin board then read their story to the class, having the class guess which heart is theirs. The heart can be representative of something, they can describe the actual process they used to create it, they might even write the story first then decorate the heart.