Valentine’s Day Activity

Three weeks into the New Year, goes by fast. I’m not as bad as the retail stores who have up holiday decorations up months before the actual holiday! I would like to share ideas and activities a short time before Valentine’s Day so you can do them with your children and students.This is a short video for Valentine’s Day just for you! We chose Manners Monkey, Healthy Hippo, Do’er Duck and Friendship Frog to make a fun Valentine’s Day card and also introduce these Characters of Character to your children discussing what the trait means.

A list of what you will need to get started:

• Print out the cards here, you can print on card stock or copy paper

  Manners Monkey to discuss good manners, take this opportunity to ask your child what some polite words are

  Friendship Frog to discuss friendship, take this opportunity to ask your child who some of their friends are

  Healthy Hippo to discuss healthy habits, take this opportunity to ask your child what their healthy habits might look like

  Do’er Duck to discuss perseverance, take this opportunity to ask your child what tasks they might find difficult

• Materials to color, crayons, color pencils, watercolor or tempera paints

• Paint brush, glue and scissors

• Construction paper and misc. art materials you might allow your child to use, such as glitter :)

Another idea other than just coloring the cards is to print them out and make a Journal with each one. Use this for the month of February or the week of Valentines Day on February 14th. Print the cards out, cut them out to make individual covers and pages. This is a wonderful opportunity for your child to write and be creative on their own and intentionally think about each character trait. Get as detailed as you want or keep it simple, below are some ideas:

• Friendship Frog Journal. Ask your child to write about their friends and draw pictures. You can also suggest they make their friend a Friendship Frog Valentines’ Day Card to share and acknowledge their friendship.

• Healthy Hippo Journal. Ask your child to write about their healthy habits and draw pictures. You can build from this by adding pages on physical healthy habits, emotional healthy habits and social healthy habits.

• Do’er Duck Journal. Ask your child to write about things that they find difficult but because they kept on trying have now overcome them! Who helped them with this? Get as detailed as you wish.

• Manners Monkey Journal. Ask your child to write about what words they use to show they have good manners. What do they do that shows that they have good manners?

• Make a Journal and allow your child to add to it as often as they would like. Discuss each trait and keep visual reminders so that they are reminded of these traits which will become a part of their daily language when you are a role model and acknowledge their good character, too!

Get creative when teaching your children, they don’t all learn the same way. My favorite saying is as follows as there is so much truch to it:

TELL me and I forget, TEACH me and I remember INVOLVE me and I learn. Benjamin Franklin