FREE Valentine's Day Clip Art

I love Valentine's Day!!

 It's only a one-day holiday - not like the extravaganza of Christmas - but it's such a sweet celebration that it warms my heart every year!

I just created a new clip art set for this special day and I wanted to share it with you for FREE!

Just click HERE to pick it up in my Chirp Graphics shop on TPT!

FREE Valentine's Day Clip Art Set

Valentine's Day is on its way!

It's one of those holidays that transports me right back to the excitement of being a kid.

If you're already starting to look for some ideas for the big day, you may want to check out my post, 
6 Awesome Games for your Pre-K Valentine's Day Party.

It contains lots of tried and true activities that you might find useful!

This year, in honour of the upcoming day, I've created a couple of new clip art sets.

I plan to use them to make some fun games and writing activities for Valentine's week!

The set below contains 38 images in total.

Each of the clips is offered in colour, blackline and black and white.  
If you'd like a copy for your projects, just click below - Valentine's Day Cards and Mailboxes

I'd also love to offer you a freebie!

If you are in need of some new HEARTS for your worksheets or other activities, you may want to pick up the

FREE Lace Hearts Clip Art Set below.  

 

Enjoy!

6 Awesome Games for your Preschool Valentine's Day Party

Day one of Valentine's parties is now behind us here at preschool.  Just one more Valentine's Day class party left! Phew!

Just kidding though.  I actually love Valentine's Day!  

I still have vivid memories of handing out valentines in elementary school...

...hanging up my little "mailbox" on my desk or in the post office area  

...running around the classroom with my bag of valentines and other goodies to deliver  

...the look of my Valentine's bag, can, envelope, or paper plate "mailbox" when it was filled to the top with colourful cards

...having a class party with treats and games...  

What could be more fun?!

Why, perhaps a preschool Valentine's Day party.

Today there was lots of fun to be had for preschoolers, too!  

Here's what we did: 

At one station, the children tried their hand at Heart Bowling.   

Below is a close-up of one of the pins so that you can better see the felt "heart topper."

 Another popular game was "Balloon Tennis."

 Here is how the "raquet" looks from the back.  

The amount of tape added may seem like overkill, but you actually need that much to hold the paint stick firmly in place. 

And here is a photo of our lively Heart Catcher game. 

For this game, one player drags the heart around on the table while another holds the handle on the milk jug and tries to catch the heart underneath it.

(The bottom of the milk jug has been cut off with a pair of scissors.)

Then we had a card making station with some images from my Valentine's Day Messages pack.  

And a heart toss station.  

Some board game stations - This is my Valentine's Day Roll and Cover Game.

For the treats, we had a cookie decorating table.  

And as for the valentines...well, we kept things easy this year.

There have been some hectic set-ups in this department in the past!.

This year we got smart and kept it really easy.

We set up a Post office area near the entrance to the preschool. 

 As parents arrived, they delivered valentines into the bags with their son or daughter.  The valentines were addressed, to"My Friend" instead of with specific names.

Then the valentine bags were left untouched until the end of class when the children picked them up to take home and enjoy.    

Simple, fun, easy!  

Hope you enjoy your Valentine's Day celebration.

And I hope you all get (or create) a special something for yourself on Valentine's Day, too!

Show the Love! Valentine's Day Cards for Parents

This year our class is making a "wearable valentine" to give to parents.  I saw a version of this idea on Crayons and Whimsy and thought it would be a great one to try with our preschoolers.

Here is a sample of one of the nearly finished valentines.   It just needs the string attached so that it can be worn around the child's neck.

Here is a close-up of the poem.  

It will be so cute to have all of the children wearing their valentine (and also BEING the valentine) when the parents come to pick them up on Valentine's Day.  

Here is how we made them:

Place some marbles in a container of paint.  We chose to use white paint.  (This tray of paint needs refilling, but you get the idea! :))

Lay the paper heart (which should be big enough to cover the children's chest and tummy) in a box or plastic bin.  

The children hold the bin and tip it around to make the marbles roll across the heart creating painting lines.  

Provide a copy of the poem to glue onto the heart, as well as various other decorations (sparkles, hearts, stickers),  We also gave the kids a heart shaped sponge to create heart prints around the edges.  

Let the valentines dry and then tape a piece of string or ribbon to the back so that the valentine can be worn around the child's neck.  

A wearable valentine!  I think the parents will love it and it was lots of fun to make!

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How Can You Encourage Preschoolers to be Empathetic?

With Valentine's Day fast approaching, I thought it was a good time to do a little lesson on

FEELINGS

 I broached the topic by introducing the concept of the Wrinkled Heart.

We begin by talking about how the things we do or say can make people's hearts feel happy or sad.  

Then we brainstorm specific things that could make a heart feel sad or "wrinkled." 

For every idea the children give me, I make a fold in a large paper heart.  Once the heart is filled with folds, I open it up again and we take a look at it.  

We discuss how wrinkled it is now that its feelings have been hurt so many times.   

The students are then asked to say, "Sorry" to the heart like we do when we have hurt a friend's feelings.  

After saying "sorry," we take another look at the heart.  I ask the children if the heart looks any different now that we have said "sorry" to it.  Is it smooth and new looking again?  

No.  Everyone will agree that it is still wrinkled.  

I tell the children that although a wrinkled heart may forgive us, it will not be as new and smooth as before.  We must try our best not to wrinkle it in the first place, and instead do things that will make it happy.    

Here are some of the children's ideas for how to make someone's heart feel happy.

My co-teacher and I follow up this lesson by letting the children know that we will be writing down all of the instances of caring that we see in the classroom this month.  

Here are two of the hearts that we filled out today.  

(Both related to kindness at snack time :))

We displaying our collection of "good deed hearts" on our wall along with our wrinkled and happy hearts.

Here is a close-up of the wrinkled heart lesson that is posted on our wall for parents to read.

We hope to have our wall filled with "good deed" hearts by the end of the month!

If you don't want to miss any ideas and freebies from Teach Easy Resources Blog,

 you can subscribe to receive these posts straight into your e-mail box or by RSS feed.

  Just click on the Subscribe button on the right margin of this blog.  

Free Valentine's Day Clip Art

I have been fooling around creating my first set of clip art to offer from my shop.  It took some time to figure out how to get the images on a transparent background, but I think I did it and it's ready to go!

I'd like to offer you this "commemorative" set for FREE from my clip art shop HERE.  

You may use it for personal use or for creating your own teaching resources to sell. 

All I ask is that you follow my terms of use specified in the product description.   Thank you! 

After creating this clip art set, I went on to develop two more resources to celebrate Valentine's Day.  

It's such a fun holiday and it's always great to have a few extra activities on hand to make the week special, or to add to one of your Valentine's Day party stations.    

First, I made a roll and cover game perfect for preschoolers. 

In this game, the heart monster wants to give away all his Number Valentine's, but he needs to wrap them first.  

To play, just roll a number and then cover that number on the game board with one of the gift images.  See who "wraps" all of their valentines first!

If you think your class might enjoy this game, you can view thumbnail images of the product HERE.     

I also created a set of images for a Valentine's Day card-making station.  It saves you the time of having to write the messages in the cards for the children.  

They can colour the images/messages and glue them right into their cards for family and friends.  15 images to choose from for $1.95.

If you think this would be of use to you, just click on the image below to see thumbnails of the product. 

I think I'll be making a card for my sweet husband at this station.  Ah, the fun of Valentine's Day!