As someone who has had students make all kinds of different Valentine’s Day cards (and as a parent who has been lucky to receive cards from my own kids), I will admit that I do have a favorite “type” of kid-created Valentine cards. The cards I love the most have two components: a student photo and student writing.
I love the idea of incorporating a photo of the child, and not only for the simple reason that parents love pictures of their kids. I also imagine the parent finding the card as a keepsake years from now. A picture really helps capture the memory of their child at the age they were when they made the card.
And student writing is what “makes” the card, in my opinion. Kids come up with the most thoughtful (and often funny) things to say to their loved ones at home. Parents love reading these sweet messages from their kids, who are only going to be little for so long.
Front of the Card
This Valentine’s Day card from students to parents integrates both of these (photos and writing) in a lighthearted way! Here are a couple of options for the cover:
Students color the background of the card with crayon, color pencil, or pastel, or paint with watercolor. In the samples above, crayon was used for the background and the balloons are colored in marker.
Instead of having the kids color the balloons, another idea you could do is paint the student’s fingers (or use a stamp pad) and have them make hearts with their fingerprints inside the balloons.
Photo Taking Tips
Here are a few tips for taking students’ photographs:
- You might want to put a blue butcher paper background behind your students to have it look like the sky, if you plan on “bubble cutting” with a thin border around the picture of the student. If you plan on cutting right around their picture with no border, then the background will not matter.
- Have students stand about 7-8 feet away from you when taking the picture. Tell them to raise their left hand in the air toward their left, as if holding onto the balloons flying away. They should pretend to look up toward the balloons.
- You can either get your pictures developed, or you could also insert them into a Word document or PowerPoint and size them to your liking to ensure that they fit correctly on the template beneath the balloons, and then print them using a color printer.
Once you have their pictures, simply use a glue stick to attach them onto the template (after students have colored it). Fold a larger piece of 18×24 colored construction paper like a card, and glue the template on the front as the cover.
And, voilà! You’ve got yourselves a Valentine card cover that the kids AND their parents will love.
Inside of the Card
Tell students that they will get to write a letter to their parents (or other loved ones they live with) on the inside of the card. This can be used as an opportunity to teach or review the parts of a letter, such as greeting, body, closing etc.
Have students brainstorm what they might include in a written letter to their parents/guardians. Get them thinking about reasons why they love them, their favorite things to do together, and maybe some things they could thank them for.
For the letter, you can give each student a piece of writing paper to go along with the balloon theme.
Here are a couple of additional writing pages that can be used for the inside of the card. You could copy pages for the specific number of boys/girls you have in your class, or if you’d prefer to have all students use the same paper, there’s also a writing page with balloons only. The “balloons only” page could also be utilized as extra pages if students need more than one page to write.
Using the same piece of folded construction paper with the cover of the card, glue the pages of their writing on the inside. For students who might write on more than one page, you could staple their pages inside so that they are flippable.
Where to Get It!
If you’d love for your students to make this Valentine’s Day card, all of the templates for the front of the card and the writing pages are only $1 in my website shop (where you can earn Reward Points for future purchases!) and also in my TPT store.
More Valentine’s Day Resources
In case you’re in need of additional Valentine’s Day ideas, click on any of the photos below for more details about these favorites!
Up, Up, and Away!
If you have questions about any of these ideas, feel free to reach out in the comments or through my contact form. Valentine’s Day is all about love, and I’d love to hear from you! 🙂
Wishing you, your students, and their families all the love your hearts can carry this Valentine’s Day!