Open Your Heart! Lesson Plan

What We Are Learning

Social and Life Skills Focus:

relationship skills/expressing love

Theme Vocabulary:

open your heart, compliment

Skills We’re Practicing:

group discussion, critical thinking, vocabulary, fine-motor skills, graphing

Happy Valentine’s Day, Mouse! by Laura Numeroff follows Mouse as he makes valentines for his friends. As he makes each one, he thinks about what makes each of his friends special so each valentine will be “just right.” As you read, ask children to think about what makes each of their friends special to them. When you’re done, go around the circle and have children share their ideas.

Materials: large ball of yarn

Build a culture of friendship while creating a beautiful kindness mosaic.
Gather students together in a circle in the meeting area of your classroom. Tell them that they will practice giving compliments to each other. Remind them that a compliment is something nice you say to someone.
Demonstrate by holding the end of a string of yarn. Compliment someone in the circle by saying something like “Your smile brightens my day!” Then toss or roll the ball of yarn to that student while continuing to hold the string.
Ask that student to compliment a different person in the circle. Then, while still holding the string, that student should toss the ball of yarn to the person they’ve complimented. Continue until everyone in the circle has given and received a compliment.
When you’re done, ask students to look at the yarn creation. What do they notice? Talk about how it felt to receive and give a compliment. relationship skills/community-building

Materials: red or pink construction paper, scissors, pom-poms, number cube

Strengthen number sense with this fun, festive game.
In advance, cut a large heart from a sheet of construction paper. Use that heart as a template to cut out another heart of the same size. Put aside the cut-out hearts. (You can discard them or use them for a different project.) The two sheets of construction paper with the open hearts will be the game boards for the game.
Have students work in pairs. Give each student an open-heart game board. Place a generous amount of pom-poms between the game boards, along with a number cube. Students will then take turns rolling the number cube and placing that number of pom-poms inside their heart. The first student to fill their heart wins! counting/one-to-one correspondence