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This post has been co-written with Ben Wolfson, a full-time educator and assistant principal in the USA.
Those people who sneer down their noses at Valentine’s Day have obviously never spent time in a kindergarten classroom in February. Instead of being about romance and love, Valentine’s Day in kindergarten is all about friendship and terrible puns. You’ll see kids giving each other little messages of friendship, along with associated small toys and gifts. As their teacher, you can harness this spirit of friendship and cooperation by theming your academics around the holiday. These Valentines Alphabet Clip Strips will help your students practice their letter recognition skills while being surrounded by hearts, cherubs and friends. Download this free Valentines Day literacy center now!
Teaching Upper and Lowercase Letter Activities
Being able to recognize both uppercase and lowercase forms of all 26 letters is an essential skill for your kindergarten students to master, especially as they see them in so many different fonts throughout the day. They have to be able to give the letter its official name for spelling purposes, and also be able to say the sounds it can make in different words. As with all foundational kindergarten skills, practice makes permanent, and this Valentines alphabet activity helps them to study the uppercase and lowercase version of each letter.
Preparing This Valentines Day Literacy Center
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Extension Activities For Valentines Alphabet Clip Strips
The premise behind this Valentines alphabet activity is simple: students take a clip strip and look at the letter shown in the cloud at the top. Then, using either a wooden peg, a paperclip or a dry erase marker (the latter only works if you’ve laminated them!), they mark all versions of the shown letter. The best thing about this Valentines Day literacy center is that you can make it self-checking by putting a mark on the back of each clip card so students can see the correct answers. Your students will master these Valentines alphabet clip strips quickly, so try some of these extension activities:
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Find the matching letters – to increase the challenge, take all the clip strips and cut the individual hearts out. Toss a bunch of them into a bowl and then give your students the cloud cards. They’ll pull one cloud card at a time and race to find all the uppercase and lowercase forms of that letter.
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Partner up – Valentine’s Day is all about friendship and teamwork, so use these fun upper and lowercase letter activities to get their social skills working. Cut off the clouds from each of the alphabet clip strips and give them to one partner. Give the rest of the clip strips to the other partner. The partner with the clouds has to read a letter out loud, and their buddy has to find all the instances of that letter on as many different clip cards as possible.
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Make their own – true mastery of a skill comes when students can use the knowledge by themselves in a new setting. Create your own blank Valentine’s alphabet clip strips by printing strips of 6 blank boxes. Students choose a letter to put in the box at the top, and some options to try and trick their friends. Give them stickers and glitter to decorate for another fun Valentine’s Day literacy center that your students will love.
Like this? Then you’ll love my 10 Valentines Themed Literacy and Math Centers. These easy-prep games will get your students working on letters, phonics, numbers and more!
Games included:
1) Alphabet Clip Strips – identify lower and uppercase of the letter shown, work fine motor and literacy at the same time!
2) Letter Case Matching Hearts – 2 piece puzzles for A-Z
3) Spin and Cover Letters – 5 Letter identification mats for A-Z for use with plastic spinner or a simple paperclip and pencil
4) Valentines Vowels – fill in the missing vowels of common CVC words, 40 cards included (8 each for A,E,I,O,U)
5) Valentines Cards Syllable Sort – sort out the picture cards into the mailbox showing the correct number of syllables
6) 1-10 Memory Game – tally and number versions included
7) Roll to 100 – special printable hearts design dice
8) 1-10 Lego Mats – practice writing out the number and forming the number with blocks
9) 1-10 Number Tracing Strips – perfect for dry erase writing practice
10) Which Has More Clip Cards – identify which group of chocolates is bigger
Check it out for more ready-to-go fun!
Fun Books About Kindness and Love:
Other Valentines Printables You’ll Love:
1) Valentines Alphabet Clip Strips – Kids will choose among 5 different letters on the strip to identify the matching ones.
2) Valentines Tally Mark Cards – Learn how to count tally marks up to 20.
3) Valentines Worksheet Pack – 50 pages of mixed printables for literacy and math.
4) Kindness Number Puzzle Strips – Counting and number sequencing from 1 to 10.
5) Roll and Cover Number Hearts – Practice number recognition up to 6 with the special printable dice.
6) Valentines Alphabet Match – Students will put together uppercase and lowercase letters.
Fun Classroom Tools to Celebrate Valentine’s Day:
Other Printables That Work On Learning Letters:
1) Lowercase Alphabet Tracing Cards – Grab these free lowercase alphabet tracing cards for a quick literacy center that you can use any time of the year! These back to school handwriting practice cards are easy to use; just download and print off copies of the letters you’re studying that week. It’s a great idea to laminate them so you can use them for trace and erase or playdough activities.
2) Flower Alphabet Sound Mats– These cute flower alphabet sound mats will fit beautifully with your outdoor theme and give your students plenty of practice when they’re learning the alphabet. These free alphabet printables show a wide range of common objects and is sure to be your new favorite hands-on preschool letter activity.
3) Space Alphabet Sequence Cards – At a foundational level, you can adapt any of your alphabet order activities to have a space theme, and these cute alphabet sequence clip cards will keep your students engaged with their fun pictures and challenges. They are a great way to have your students work on learning the alphabet independently.
4) Unicorn Alphabet BINGO – This unicorn theme alphabet bingo pack is a fun and engaging way to help preschool students master their letters before starting kindergarten. By having your students play letter recognition games like ABC bingo, you give them opportunities to learn important social interactions like turn taking while also reinforcing the shapes and sounds of each letter.
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5) Farm Alphabet Find and Cover – Work on letter recognition with your preschool students using this printable farm literacy center. You can use this fun farm alphabet game any time of the year in small groups or individually.
6) Dinosaur Lunch Alphabet Munch – This dino alphabet match game helps students in identifying lowercase letters and identifying capital letters. In this free alphabet printable for preschool, your student will pick a card and find the matching letter on the recording sheet. So simple! Print your dinosaur worksheet for preschool now!
7) Alphabet Word Search Worksheets – These cute alphabet wordsearch worksheets combine alphabet pictures with hunting for words in a grid and wrap up with traceable letters. The best thing about these alphabet tracing worksheets is that they’re ready to use in a matter of minutes but you’ll have a literacy center you can use all year long for plenty of lowercase alphabet tracing practice!
8) Alphabet Tracing Pages – The traceable letters and pictures in these fun trace and erase kinder alphabet worksheets give multiple opportunities for letter shape practice as well as spelling of some longer words. Download this alphabet tracing worksheets pdf and help your students gain mastery over their lowercase alphabet tracing.
