A Sweet Recipe and a Give-a-Way!

A sweet, sweet holiday is coming... Valentine's Day! Yay!

Time for all of those conversation hearts and Justin Bieber Valentine's passed out in class...

and.. this truly awesome writing prompt! I came across this fantastic and FREE Valentine's activity created by Angelica Alves, and I am SO glad I did! My students absolutely loved it! I enjoyed reading their final products...SO adorable! I normally find holiday activities a bit silly because they usually don't make me feel like I am really "teaching" anything... this one does a fantastic job of allowing the students to have fun and be creative, while requiring them to focus on their writing. I am going to hang up their final products on Monday so that they can be up for the week of Valentine's Day!

This FREE project comes with a Power Point so that you can 

explain it to the students with the use of examples.

The students start off by listing details that they would want in a best friend...SO CUTE!

The students were coming up with the funniest things....swag...craziness...silliness...humor...style...

I just loved listening to them talk about what they want in a friend! I especially loved when they mentioned those serious qualities like honesty and trust. They can show the importance of each quality to them by changing the amount of each quality needed in their "Recipe for their Best Friend"

Then the students write out the actual recipe...using fancy and fun words 

like, "a dash of..." and "whisk the mixture until..."

It was so great hearing them bounce ideas off of one another while creating their friendship recipe.

Time to decorate! 

Something really great for me about this activity is that is went really well with our Seven Habits character traits at our Leader In Me school. We find character traits to be a really important part of each day. This Friendship Recipe did a really great job allowing the students to think about those traits on their own, and how/why they are important in a friend.

In case you missed the link above, download this FREE activity HERE!

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Another piece of exciting news:

I am really excited to be participating in an amazing giveaway! Krystal Mills of Lessons From The Middle is celebrating her FIRST Blog Birthday in a big way. There are close to 100 teachers who have donated their fabulous products/gift certificates for her giveaway. There are prize packages for grades K-3, 4-6 and 7-9 - so there's something for almost everyone! 

Be sure to make your way over to Lessons From The Middle Feb. 8th - 11th to enter.