Valentine’s Day Early Reader Activity

The children at my home daycare love this poem.  I wrote out the words on big strips of paper to allow the early readers to practice their oral reading skills.  You can write out the names of your friends and feature them in this poem.  The younger children in my daycare like to act out the poem with felt hearts as an older child reads it aloud.

You will notice that the children’s names are on different pieces of paper.  This way, we can switch around the poem and have different children participate.  The coloured paper also helps the younger children isolate the words that are names. They will start to recognize their own name and their friend’s names after a few repetitions.

I wrote out the number words in a different colour so that some of the younger children could practice recognizing them. I also added the correct number of hearts beside the number word to give the younger children a visual clue.

Whoever was reading the poem got to use the special pointer to help them track the words as they read.  Kids love to use pointers!  It’s fun and I haven’t met a child yet who wasn’t excited about a turn with the pointer.  Ours is a chop stick with two foam apple shapes glued together.

Here are the words to the poem;

Five pretty valentine’s waiting in a store,

_______(insert child’s name) bought one and then there were four.

Four pretty valentine’s shaped like a “V”,

_______ bought one and then there were three.

Three pretty valentine’s said, “I love you”,

_______bought one and then there were two.

Two pretty valentine’s, this was so much fun,

_______bought one and then there was one.

One pretty valentine sitting on the shelf,

I felt sorry for it, so I bought it for myself!

I wish you all a wonderful Valentine’s Day!