Valentine's Day Activities for the Special Education Classroom

Happy Monday and Happy (almost) Valentine's Day!!

I never used to make a big production of Valentine's Day in my classroom. We always focused on Feelings and made Valentine's Day more of a secondary theme. However, then I found this super cute book from the If You Give a Mouse a Cookie series by Laura Numeroff and Felicia Bond and now we do a whole unit on Happy Valentine's Day, Mouse!

This super cute book is great for talking about Valentine's Day but it is extra awesome for talking about friendship and why we love our friends because in the story Mouse makes different valentine cards for each of his friends based on what he loves about them.

On my TPT store, you can find my Happy Valentine's Day Mouse! Picture Book Communication and Comprehension Supports which includes printables,  IEP goal ideas, and progress monitoring sheets including these vocabulary boards which can be made into a fun memory or matching game...

...and this sentence-building board which can be printed and used right away or made into an interactive velcro board. 

Grab this unit here by clicking the image below:

To go with this theme, last year I had the idea to have the kids go around and say something they loved about each of their classmates. At first, I thought this may be a little difficult for some of my kids with poor verbal skills to do but in the end I was very touched with their thoughtfulness! It was a great activity to take a break to show our appreciation for our friends and at the same time it really made each student feel good about themselves. What is a better lesson than that?!

For this activity, I write the student's name on the line and then fill in each heart with something kind a classmate shares like in the example below. 

To grab this activity and 11 more activities you can do with your class for Valentine's Day, visit my Teachers Pay Teachers store to get my Valentine's Day Thematic Group Activities Unit. Some of my favorite activities from this unit include:

Valentine's Day BINGO: An easy way to work on vocabulary, joint attention, and matching. 

Valentine Delivery Game Board: Another fun way to practice a variety of skills! This game is open-ended so that you can use any flashcards you want such as vocabulary, spelling words, sight words, math facts, and more! 

Milkshakes Visual Recipe: Who doesn't love a good milkshake?! My favorite memory of this recipe was using the blender with an adapted switch so all of my students could participate in blending their own milkshake. 

Valentine Letters: Another way we spread the Valentine's Day love was these cute letters where every student could write a valentine to each of their classmates. I loved seeing everyone's faces light up when they saw the nice things their friends had to say about them. 

Clifford's First Valentines Day Story Board: Another fun Valentine's Day story is Clifford's First Valentine's Day by Norman Bridwell. This story board is divided into categories by wh-question word (who-what doing-what-where). Students can use it to make sentences from top to bottom (who is doing what where) or answer comprehension questions. 

Candy Heart Graphing: There never seems to be any shortage of candy hearts in the classroom this time of year. We have fun each year sorting and graphing our hearts before eating them of course!

Love them both? Now you can BUNDLE AND SAVE by clicking the image below to get my Valentine's Day Bundle!