It’s almost the time of the year again–Valentine’s Day! Valentine’s Day is often considered as a day of romantic love. We think that even more, it should be celebrated as a day of friendship and kindness. Usually, there are some special Valentine’s Day activities in schools. Dear Teacher, we want to ease your stress to come up with new idea to celebrate. Therefore, we completed this 5-idea list for you!
1. My Secret Valentine
Already a classic activity for valentine’s day. Teacher assigns randomly a partner for everyone. A mission will be to somehow make everyone’s own secret valentine happy. First you can discuss together what kind of ways students can use: maybe a handmade card, a little chocolate bar or just some delightful behaviour towards a secret valentine during the day. You can also play My Secret Valentine the whole week and see even more kindness in your class.
2. Random Acts of Kindness
The idea of random acts of kindness is to surprise your friend or a complete stranger by nice actions. Acts are not intended to be huge spectacles–the only goal is to cheer up another person somehow! Examples: you can open a door to someone, help your friend with homework, praise your school’s janitor or compliment the jacket of a total stranger. If you want, you can even announce the Valentine’s Day Random acts of kindness competition for your students! Let’s count who reaches the biggest amount of kindness during Valentine’s Day?
3. Let’s Take a Friendsie!
Kids love to take selfies and play with their cell phones. Why don’t you let your students use them with Valentine’s day activity? First discuss friendships in small groups– how would you describe friendship and what does it mean to you? After that, students have to plan and carry out a photo portraying friendship. You can use social media platform like Instagram and make up your own Valentine’s day friendsie hashtag. Don’t forget to check together what kind of pics the students accomplished!
4. Gratitude Letter
Gratitude is really important skill and according to research in positive psychology, it can even make you happier! Ask students to pick one of their loved ones: it can be friend, family member or even a pet. Then ask: ”Why is that person important to you? How would you thank the person?” Challenge your kids to deliberate the question and then write a gratitude letter to the chosen person. Gratitude letter can be sent to the receiver but it can also remain a secret.
5. Mightify your friend!
Mightifying means giving positive feedback on someone’s character strengths. Examples of character strengths are kindness, curiosity, bravery, creativity and self-regulation. In mightifying we have two rules 1. Only positive feedback is allowed and 2. Everyone gets as much feedback. This will be guaranteed by randomizing pairs during the feedback round.
In mightifying there is two phases: 1. Pick one or two character strengths for friends. 2. Then explain shortly why did you choose these strengths. Encourage students to be as descriptive as possible. Did the person something nice during recess? Did she/he succeed at maths class? How is one’s kindness visible?
If you are able to use iPads, you can download Mightifier application and let the app to do the randomizing for you. It’s easy and fast! If you don’t have iPads, you can print the template below. Tip: Ask students first to write their own names on the paper. Then mix the papers and check that everyone has some other student’s paper. Next–let’s mightify each other!
mightifier_feedback_template (Click to open and print)
