Valentine's Day Craft and Writing Prompt

Boy is winter here!! January 12th and we finally got some very cold weather. Totally miserable day outside - rainy, windy, and cold! I am lucky to live on the ocean or we would be socked with snow. On the plus side, snow means a snow day!

So I am in my sweats, on my couch. My 3-month-old is content in his swing and my 3-year-old is playing Dragonland on his dad's Ipad. This is a very typical afternoon for me. And the perfect time for a blog post.

The writing prompt we did was a very common one - "what does love mean to me?" I encouraged the students to think of times when they feel the most loved and the most special people in their lives. I was very proud of what they came up with.

To make it pretty, they did their final drafts inside of a heart on white paper. I then gave them pink, purple, red and white tissue paper. Their challenge was to decorate their paper with little, scrunched up pieces of the tissue paper and glue them down in a unique design on their writing samples. The purpose of the challenge was to strengthen their "alligator fingers." These are the muscles in the fingers they use to write. This is especially helpful for students who have poor penmanship. Since we still teach penmanship in our school, I felt it was important to do exercises such as this to work on forming letters and gaining more control of their pencils - a problem for many students.

I think the finished product came out really cool!