Kids Heart Healthy Day |Celebrate Valentine's Day in School with Activities Across the Curriculum

The Physical Education teachers at my school conduct a Valentine’s Day activity called “Jump Rope for Heart” (now renamed Kids Heart Healthy Day). The students take turns jumping rope and doing other physical activities. They make pledges to raise money for the American Heart Association.

A couple of years ago, they asked the other special area teachers (music, art, library) to join in. The music teachers conducted jumping and marching (let’s face it, STOMPING) activities to music. Did you know that your heart mimics the rhythm of music you are listening to? The art teacher had them create heart shapes, with random acts of kindness written on them. As the librarian, I couldn’t very well read a quiet story in the noisy gym!

So, I put up posters about animal heart facts: Did you know that an octopus has three hearts, or that a mouse’s heart can beat 632 times per minute? You learn something new in the library, every day! I also put up a poster showcasing poems about the heart, jumping (and of course, LOVE).

Candy Hearts

(by Kenn Nesbitt)

Chocolate assortments

and little pink hearts.

Hershey’s kiss rose

and sour Sweet Tarts.

All of these candies

arrived with some cards,

sending me mushy

romantic regards.

Valentine’s Day,

what a troublesome date.

Don’t like the cards

but the candy is great!

I put out table games, like the kind we might play at book checkout time. These included sight word recognition games, roll and cover math games, coloring in cupcakes with synonyms. Others were matching two halves of a heart that showed rhyming words, spelling out secret Valentine’s messages, putting number cards in order. Most of these I got on Teachers pay Teachers. A couple I created myself.

Of course we used heart stickers and candy shaped erasers for our game pieces (we can’t give out real candy any more…boo, hoo). The kids were asked to wear red and it was awesome to see how many heart tee shirts are out there (along with red football and hockey jerseys).

While I didn’t have access to my Smart Board (worse luck), earlier in the week we played some of my Valentine’s games. I have one for Smart Notebook, a couple for BOOM Cards and Google Slides. It was one day the students weren’t afraid to show the love!