Valentine's Day Craftivity

Hello everyone!

Tonight I'm linking up with Tales from Outside the Classroom to share some things I love.

The first thing, and you may know this about me already, is that I love to cook.  I love the cooking blogs that I read, I love Food Network, but most of all, I love Ina Garten.  She taught me to cook.  Not in person, of course, but I'm such a visual learner that I would come home from school and watch her show, then get up and make exactly what she made.  I really feel like I owe a lot (of pounds) to Ina, but it's well worth it!

Second, I love Chai tea.  It calms me down and my husband makes me the best chai tea lattes on the weekends- he won't do it during the week!

Third, I love my students.  Some of these kids came from living in deplorable conditions and survived traumatic experiences and yet they greet me every day with a huge smile and a joke.  I have tried to make my classroom as safe and positive an enviroment as it can possibly be.  I use music as often as I can, and teach with a smile.  I have a general idea of the kind of families some of my kids go home to, so I want to be the best role model I can be for the short time they see me.

I mentioned that I teach with music- I'm desperately trying to give my kids an education in all things American, like jazz, rock and roll, country, and showtunes.  Earlier this year, we learned about scarecrows using the Wizard of Oz.  If anyone has a better way to teach about scarecrows than that, please let me know. 

In February, we're rolling back to the 20's and 30's with Frank Loesser's song "A Bushel and a Peck."



We'll be making a pretty little heart for our bulletin board, 

with a 2013-style remix! In 8th grade, I'll turn this into a lesson about irony, and in the younger grades, we'll learn about opposites and differences in size.

 

And since no one really uses the words bushel or peck any more, we'll do some vocabulary exercises to understand what they mean.  I made this anchor chart to help my visual learners understand the words while we listen to the song. 

My students need lots of help with reading comprehension, so I wrote a Valentine's Day Reading Comprehension Passage that's targeted directly to their level.  This one was written for my second graders, but can be used above or below as needed. 

To see more about this Valentine's Day Craftivity, head over to my TPT store. 

Have a great week!

-Maria