St. Valentine for young learners and not only

[Т А Кузнецова]

St. Valentine’s Day for young learners and not only.

More and more people all over the world celebrate St. Valentine’s Day. Here are two web-sites : one is for young learners and the other for teens.

www.supersimplelearning.com

Here you can find video and a lot of activities to try in the classroom.

Valentine's Day Game

Hearts Concentration

・ Print two color copies of the color hearts worksheet (hearts1.pdf).

・ Cut and paste the hearts onto 20 index cards.

・ Students form groups of 2-6 students.

・ Review the colors of all the hearts.

・ Have the students spread the colored heart cards face down on the floor or table in front of them.

・ The first student turns over one card and names the color ("It's a blue heart"), and then turns over a second card and names the color ("It's a pink heart.") If the two cards match, the student says, "Happy Valentine's Day!" and keeps the cards. That student gets another turn. If there is no match, the student turns the cards back over and it is the next player's turn. Continue taking turns until all the cards are gone.

Tips:

With large classes, make several sets of cards and have the students play in small groups. You can also have students pair up and play together. So, if you have 10 students in a class, have them pair up and make 5 teams.

Variation 1

For students with some basic reading skills, instead of matching colored heart to colored heart, make 10 colored heart cards (hearts1.pdf), and 10 word cards (hearts3.pdf), and have the students match the colored hearts to the correct color words. If you would like students to match colored hearts to the color words but they are not yet proficient enough to read all of the words, you can underline or trace the words with the correct colored marker. For example, on the card that says "red", underline the word "red" with a red marker.

Variation 2

For students with a little higher reading level, you can use the blank hearts worksheet (hearts2.pdf) and fill in the hearts with different Valentine's Day vocabulary words (for example, heart, chocolate, cupid, love, card, February, friend).

www.history.com/topics/valentines-day

Here is the history of the holiday and typical Valentine’s Day greetings:

In addition to the United States, Valentine's Day is celebrated in Canada, Mexico, the United Kingdom, France and Australia. In Great Britain, Valentine's Day began to be popularly celebrated around the 17th century. By the middle of the 18th, it was common for friends and lovers of all social classes to exchange small tokens of affection or handwritten notes, and by 1900 printed cards began to replace written letters due to improvements in printing technology. Ready-made cards were an easy way for people to express their emotions in a time when direct expression of one's feelings was discouraged. Cheaper postage rates also contributed to an increase in the popularity of sending Valentine's Day greetings.

 

Americans probably began exchanging hand-made valentines in the early 1700s. In the 1840s, Esther A. Howland began selling the first mass-produced valentines in America. Howland, known as the “Mother of the Valentine,” made elaborate creations with real lace, ribbons and colorful pictures known as "scrap." Today, according to the Greeting Card Association, an estimated 1 billion Valentine’s Day cards are sent each year, making Valentine's Day the second largest card-sending holiday of the year. (An estimated 2.6 billion cards are sent for Christmas.) Women purchase approximately 85 percent of all valentines.