Valentine's Day Free Reading and Writing Activities, Books, and Crafts

I love Valentine's Day and giving my grand kids lots of cute cuddly stuffed animals. My birthday is only 3 days later so I usually get roses on my birthday instead of Valentine's Day. (They are usually 50% off after Valentine's Day) There are so many wonderful books to read and free resources that I found to share with you. Let's start with some great books for Read Alouds. You can find a great list on Amazon by clicking on the images below. Students will love Gilbert's Funny poems in the book by Diane de Groat. I loved reading "Valentine Mice" to my ESL students. It was a great book for acting out and teaching verbs.

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Looking for some free valentine's crafts to make? How about this Candy Bear Paper Craft. Get all the directions by clicking on the image below. There are lots of other craft ideas to check out as well.

How about a few more ideas for Valentine's Day cards and crafts? I found the one below at Education.com. You can download the activity and find lots more ideas to make your Valentine's week lots of fun for your students. Just click on the image below.

You can find poems and fun activities and party ideas at apples4theteacher as well as DLTK.

Well if that's not enough I have a few of my own to share with you. This past summer I revised and updated my very first Readers Theater script called "The Symbols of Valentine's Day" for Grades 2-3 which you can check out my clicking on the picture below. It includes a complete lesson plan from Day 1 to performing it. I had lots of feedback from teachers who actually said they learned a lot about the symbols, too. You can see sample pages of all the materials and texts when you download the Preview file.

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I just uploaded my Valentine's Day Reading and Writing Unit for Grades K-1. It's called Love Bugs Valentines Adventure.  I really had lots of fun writing it. There is a fun Shared Reading Book called "Love Bug, Love Bug What do you see?" Here's a sample of one of the pages in the book.

There is an Early Emergent Reader and Emergent level Reader, 3 differentiated Sequencing and Writing Activities, Reading Response Journal pages, Comprehension Activities, and more which you can check out by clicking on the image below. You can read the full description and download the Preview file to see sample pages of all the reading and writing activities in this unit.

Hope you find some fun activities to help celebrate Valentine's Day with your students.

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What is your favorite Valentine's Day activity?

Valentine's Day Writing Activities and Free Writing Activities

Everyone loves Valentine's Day. It's a great holiday to get your students writing. I have had such great feedback on my seasonal writing activities packets that I decided to make one just for Valentine's Day. It is a smaller version than my other ones, but is full of wonderful activities to help students write complete sentences that are found in my other packets. It would be great for those of you who teach Kindergarten who are beginning to teach sentence writing.

To begin with, students need to know:

• What a sentence is
• How to construct a sentence-Word order
• What parts does a complete sentence need to have
• Capitalization, Punctuation, Spelling rules
• Lot of words

You can read a lot more about writing by clicking HERE.

You can download these free Sentence frames by clicking on the image below: They are included in my packet and can be used for whole class instruction with understanding the parts of the sentence as you see in the image below the frames.

In my Valentines Writing Activities Packet students will learn the parts of the sentence using this example:

In order for students to write they need to:

• Have something to write about (Themes are great for this.)
• Know the vocabulary words needed to make a sentence.
• Read and listen to books being read to them about the topic.
• Talk about the books related to the topic.

I have included not only Word Wall Words but also Picture/Word Cards to help students become fluent with the vocabulary. Then students will participate in a whole group activity to make sure they understand what a sentence is and isn't before Making Sentences with Sentence Frames.

There are several other activities such as Unscramble, Write, and Draw as well as 3 different leveled Writing Assessments.

You can read the complete description by clicking on the image below. You can see sample pages of all the writing activities when you download the Preview file.

 

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Celebrating Black History Month with Free Resources, Poems, Biographies, and Free Activities

February is so full of celebrations so I'm happy that we celebrate and honor African Americans all month long. Using biographies and poems is a great way to teach students about many wonderful African Americans who have contributed so much to our country. Many of them whose bravery and courage paved the way for others even against great odds. I found some wonderful resources to access free biographies and information that I'd like to share with you.

If you are looking for some great websites with biographies you can check out the ones below. The first one is called Bio.Tru Stories. You can search any name and it will not only give you a biography but also a video to go with it. I found this very informative. Just click on the picture of Ruby Bridges below to check it out.

Another great website is called Time for Kids. Here you can find not only biographies but lots of other information to help you celebrate the month. Just click on the image below to check it out.

At Fact Monster you can find 500 biographies of past and present African Americans. Just click on the image below to check out this site.

I also found lots of lessons and activities at NEA for all grade levels that you can access by clicking on the image below.

Finally Scholastic has a wealth of resources to access depending on your grade level. You can check it out by clicking on the picture below.

I finally revised and updated my Black History Month Packet that includes 2 Biographies, Bio and Subject poems as well as a variety of reading and writing activities designed to help your students learn about several famous African Americans. Students will read 2 different biographies that are differentiated at the 2nd and 3rd grade levels, engage in reading and writing 3 kinds of Subject Poem, Bio Poem, and 5W poem using the poetry form templates:

They will also write a biography, match picture/fact cards, write opinion pieces, and other activities. If you would like to check out all the activities and materials in this packet and read the complete description just click on the image below. Download the Preview file to see sample pages of all the reading and writing activities.

Here is one I wrote about Ruby Bridges. A 5W poem answers the basic questions who, what, where,when and why. You will find other 5W poems in my packet as well.

Here is the basic form of a 5W poem:

You can download your free poem and form by clicking on the picture below. I would truly appreciate your feedback.

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Hope you find some great resources to use with your students this month. Thanks for all you do to make a difference for your students.

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All About Penguins: Free Resources, Free Activities, Books, and Videos

Everyone loves Penguins. Winter is the perfect time to learn about them. Although when we hear the word, "penguin" everyone thinks of Antarctica but not all penguins live in Antarctica or in cold places. Did you know that there are 17 species of penguins? They all live in the southern hemisphere. They live in groups called colonies but there is only one species of penguins that likes to live alone. It is the Yellow-Eyed Penguin that lives in New Zealand. While doing research for my newest product, "All About Penguins" I came across some great free resources to share with all of you.

Let's start with some wonderful books about Penguins. You can find a list and summary of 20 books by clicking on the image below.

I also found 10 penguin videos for your students that you can access by clicking on the image below.

You will find lots of great free resources, activities, crafts, and books for lots of different grade levels at Scholastic. You can access them by clicking on the image below:

You can also find lots of free Penguin facts and fun activities at Kidzone by clicking on the image below.

I just uploaded my "All About Penguins" packet today that is for Grades 2-3. There are a variety of reading activities starting with a general overview about penguins that is differentiated at the 2nd and 3rd grade levels. There are also Penguin Fact cards about 8 different species of penguins for students to read and then write about the one they think is the most interesting.

Student will then match Penguin Pictures and Fact cards about the 8 different species. Students will engage in several writing activities such as Comparing and Contrasting 2 different Penguin Species, Opinion Piece Writing Prompts, and A Penguin Report about one of 8 other penguin species. You can see these activities in each of the two images below.

There are literacy activities such as Writing Adjectives about Penguins and determining Facts and Opinions, and Poetry Activities.

To read the complete description and download the Preview file to see sample pages of all the materials and activities in this packet just click on the image below.

I hope you find some good resources to use with your students this winter.

Thanks for all you do to make a difference for your students.
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I'm linking up with Carla over at Comprehension Connection. There are some wonderful Penguin Resources that other great bloggers have shared. Just click on the image below.