Hoppy in First Grade: The One About Valentine's Day

Hey!

Ok, so I know by now Valentine's Day is a memory. But I wanted to recap my day. As you know I was off the day before that with Stella. Luckily Amy took Thursday and I headed to work and got to celebrate Valentine's Day with my kiddos. Poor Amy though had to miss her first Valentine's Day with her kiddos and stay with Stella. But she got to celebrate Friday when I stayed home since I had the day off. Anywho.

So, not only was it Valentine's Day, but it was also our Friday since we didn't have school on Friday for staff development. Plus it was the day before a 4-day weekend. I was geared up for all kinds of crazy antics and wild behavior from my kiddos. I had, once again, missed a day. It wasn't looking good for me.

But, I put on my heart antennae (see above) and braced myself. But I was pleasantly surprised. My kiddos were angels, or cupids as it were. They'd missed me. I'm not going to toot my own horn or anything (TOOT TOOT) but there is a cute story. One of my kiddos came into the classroom with his eyes covered chanting, "Please be Mr. Drosche. Please be Mr. Drosche." When he saw that I was, in fact, back he yelled, "YES!" and raced to give me a hug. Awesome huh? :) So the day went off without a hitch.

Sadly, as you may have guessed from the previous post, I had to forgo some of my plans and fun thematic things. My apologies to Chinese New Year, Mardi Gras, and a full-on Valentine's Day. We'll meet again next year. So, I scrapped some things and we did Valentine's Day activities. I also took some of the time the kiddos were working on their crafts to sort through and organize absent work and the general disarray of a classroom when a Sub is present.

But it was a great day! The icing on the cupcake was the party at the end of the day, after a Pep Rally. The kids were amazing. We watched A Charlie Brown Valentine (thanks Netflix for streaming ALL of the Charlie Brown movies, what up!) ate party food, and exchanged valentines. Peacefully. Without anyone running around. No screaming. No sugar-induced chaos. It was heaven I tell you, heaven. Ahhhhh.

So, all in all it was a great day. It was also the first day in 11, yes 11, school days that all of my kiddos and I were present. Can you believe that? For 11 days straight at least one or two kiddos were absent, sometimes with me out to boot! I hope the illnesses have finally left my classroom for good because I've had about all I can take. Yuck!

So, finally I'll leave you with some pictures of the cute craftivities we did for Valentine's Day. The first one is from Cara Carroll's (she is awesome, follow her here) Be Swine (A Valentine Craftivity). It's free y'all, get it here! Awesome! Now, we didn't have time to do all of the activities but I definitely will next year. This year we did the writing part and they turned out great! The other pictures show our Love Bug Glyphs. This is something I made for Valentine's Day and you can get it here. I love gyphs (a topic for another post) and this one was super fun and easy. The kids loved it and they made for great decorations for Valentine's Day! I need to think of a St. Patrick's Day one now!

How did your Valentine's Day go? Peacefully? Too much sugar? What was your favorite craft or activity? I hope you had an awesome time and are ready for Presidents' Day!

Thanks for hopping by! :)