Valentine's Day Compliment Poster Projects!

I survived Valentine's Day 2014!!!

Luckily, we actually had a VERy mellow day thanks to my sweet friend and blogging buddy Tonya from Tonya's Treats for Teachers . She shared an amazing idea with me about a project that she has been doing with her kiddos for the past 4 years on Valentine's Day. You can check her original blog post out {here}. 

Once I heard about this super cute and awesome idea I just knew I HAD to do it in my classroom!! 

I gave my kids about 3 weeks to work on 'Part 1' of their V-day Project at home for homework. Part 1 required them to write a sweet and meaningful compliment to each of their classmates. We really spent the time talking about what a meaningful compliment was and talked about how totally lame it would be to get 24 cards that said 'You are nice'. 

Part 2 of this project was a mystery and I told my students they would learn more about it on Valentine's Day…BUT they needed to finish Part 1 to hear about Part 2!

They were sooooo excited about this project and really worked hard on it. I shared with Tonya how adorable some of my kids were because they would ask if they could stay in during recess to work on writing their cards. I even had a handful of boys who wanted to stay in (and they NEVER want to stay in) during recess- I was totally shocked when I saw one of them carefully coloring and decorating each card he wrote! 

This year, I went out and bought all of our supplies to complete Part 2 of our project. I wanted to kick myself as I was cleaning up (at then end of the day) because I forgot about an entire bag full of stickers I had bought to us- but forgot to put out. Oh well, I will just use them next year :) 

Once I got in all of my students Compliment Cards I separated them by student and put them all into baggies. 

The students then randomly chose a bag out of my basket and created a Compliment Poster (with all the sweet notes from classmates) for whichever student they chose. So if Bryanna chose Kelly- she made a poster for Kelly with the notes from all of our classmates (and me!). 

I wish I could have captured a photo to show you all when I told them about Part 2. Because it was a 'mystery' up until V-day, they had no idea what they were doing. They were completely stoked to be getting a FULL SIZE poster board to decorate and that they could go crazy with their supplies and the supplies I had purchased. 

They were required to arrange their cards (index cards) to ensure enough space before gluing. They also had to find room to decorate the persons name onto the poster… 

Once everyone was done, they each had a chance to come up in front of the class to present their posters to their classmates. It was really fun and everyone (including myself) was super excited to find out who made their poster!! 

 They all came out sooo cute!! 

I especially loved the sweet notes I got from the students!! Some of them literally made me laugh out loud!! :D 

'I hope you find a good man' 

This was another really sweet note. Thank you for the compliment sweet child, but really?! Never Retire?! You must be kidding! lol 

I hope you also had a great Valentine's Day!!