Valentine Literacy

Valentine's Day is a fun day for the children at school.  We don't focus on the commercial aspects of Valentine's Day, but rather on God's love for us and our love for our families and each other. 

Literacy plays right in to this holiday so easily.  In this particular class of Bunnies, not many are interested in writing their names.  They certainly recognize their names and even recognize their friends' names, but they are not much for grabbing a marker and writing their names themselves.  No problem!  There are many other ways to practice names. 

We used our Valentine bags as an opportunity to practice names.  Each child got a strip of paper and access to a name card with their name already properly spelled out with a photo to match.  Some used their name card to help them, and some didn't need it.  In the red tray are alphabet stamps.  Each child stamped their name and then glued it onto their bag.
This kind of activity gives teachers a fantastic opportunity to assess children's levels of competency with name and letter recognition in a non-traditional way.  We discovered that most children could spell their names and use right to left progression properly.  Yay Bunnies!