Valentines Games for 1St Grader

Bingo cards with candy hearts is always fun for kids. Also, you could google Valentine game ideas and I bet a ton would come up.

Hi-- I'm in the same boat, and here's what I have planned: The children will be in groups and will rotate to five different centers. The centers are: pin-the-arrow-on-the-heart-shaped target game; a listening station with the book "Slugs in Love," which is cute and funny; a decorate-and-eat the cookie/cupcake table; a little craft where they make a mouse with a heart-shaped piece of paper and two Hershey's kisses, and a "Love Chair" table, where every child gets a chance to sit in a decorated chair while I read him/her a personal valentine from his/her family. Then, we will play a valentine bingo game as a whole group, with the parents who helped with each station rotating around to help the kids with bingo (or "Heart," as this themed game happens to be) since it's new to some of them. My son's class is distributing valentine's cards on a different day so this doesn't work for us, but I suggest a station where they can inspect their valentines, since that's what they all want to do anyway, and perhaps a craft station where they can decorate a bag (maybe as a "mailbox") to receive their valentines at their desks. Also considered but ultimately changed was a center where we made fingerprints with a stamp pad and decorated them like people to represent people in our families and made a valentine for our families--Google Ed Emberly if you're unfamiliar with this type of project. It's easy and creative and age-appropriate for a variety of ages and levels.
The kids in our class are each getting a paperback book as a party favor; at the Halloween party they also received a book and oen of the centers was decorating a bookmark with stickers and inspecting the new book.
If your kids already know how to play "Head's Up, Seven Up," you could vary that by saying that when you trade places with someone you have to say something nice about them.
Have fun!

Hi G.,

First, I would highly recommend you break them up into "stations" because it keeps the kids occupied and makes your life much easier.

Here are a few ideas for games, if you need more let me know.

You can have a heart, either stuffed animal or paper heart and play 'hot potato" or "hot heart" Have the kids cirlce up and pass the heart around and play music and when the music stops the person holding the heart goes out of the circle. First graders tend to love this.

YOu can also do a rendition of limbo and have the kids just line up and play limbo or musical hearts. Place a bunch of large hearts on the ground and do it just like musical chairs but with "musical hearts."

Heart Stack Game:

Get a bunch of conversation hearts, probably the larger ones and give the kids a time limit, a couple of minutes or so and see who can stack the hearts the highest. If they fall over, they start over. This is fun and easy.

Word searches are always fun fill ins.

Let me know if you need anymore ideas. I hope this helped.

Hi, G.! Happy Valentine's Day!
We went to storytime at our library last night, and they played a fun game there; have you ever played London Bridge? You and another adult make a bridge, holding hands with your arms over your heads; the children line up and go "under the bridge" one at at time. When you get to "All fall down!" you lower your arms and "trap" whichever child you have caught. They did a Valentine version last night: sing this song to the tune of London Bridge, and do the game the same way.
Valentine, I love you
I love you
I love you
Valentine, I love you
Yes, I do! (hands come down and hug the kid!)

Have fun with whatever you do!
S.

The regular games work great at this age,:
Bingo,
musical chairs,

story time with actions (when they heard a certain word they had to do a simple action-talk with the librarian for ideas),

paper hearts taped on floor in a circle or path: children walk to music and jump from heart to heart when the music stops if they are on a certain heart they get a little prize then do again

look up regular kids party games on internet, then just change it to hearts and love somehow. It would be great! Good luck, and plan on a nap after, you're probably going to need it :)
K.

If feasible, try HEART instead of the word BINGO. We did this, but it was for fourth grade. It may be a bit advanced, but if it works, the kids like it and I give out little boxes of candy hearts for prizes. I'm sure whatever you plan will be a great hit!
~J.

I don't have a great game idea, but I know a cute song taht is sung to the tume of "Did you ever see a Lassie?" it goes: Everybody be a friend, a friend, a friend Everbody be a friend on Valentine's Day. Good luck wiht your party! I wish that my kid's school allowed Valentine's parties, they will have an "Empathy and Caring" party instead but with no cookies or cupcakes, blah! I am thinking of inviting my daughter's friends over for a Valentine's perty so I am going to use some of these game ideas myself!

Here's what I have planned for my son's first grade:
pin the arrow on cupid
heart tic-tac-toe (hearts out of poster board w/a grid - heart foam for markers)
bookmarks to color (hobby lobby - like $1.50 for the whole class)
heart scratch off craft (hobby lobby - also like $1.50 for the whole class).
the teacher told me that was more than enough w/the valentine distribution and food too.

Hi G.,
Its been a while but fun games I remember helping out with in my daughters class were:
Heart Stack - you have them stack as many candy hearts up as high as they can with out tipping them over in two minutes.
We also did a Hearts memory game. We had big red hearts and on the backs each pair had a different design. We taped them to the white board and had them play in teams. It was a lot of fun.
I have seen them decorate cookies but I'm not sure this is the best idea because not everyone can do sugar.
Oh a really fun thing to do too is to make their moms a valentine- we did white pre-labeled happy valentines card and then brought different colors of ink stamping pads and helped them make hearts with their thumb prints all over the card. It was way cute!
Hope these help!

familyfun.com usually has games for every occasion or google valentines party games. I've done bingo with heart cards and cute valentines pictures instead of numbers. I made my own but I bet there are valentines bingo games on the internet. I then just get a bag of conversation hearts to use as the place holders then they get to eat them when they are done. This only takes a few minutes so we can usually play a couple of times in a 10 to 15 minute session.

I am also incharge of games for my first graders class. I did a search on yahoo for kids Valentine's games and their were a lot of good ideas. Some we are going to do are Pin the heart on cupid and find your heart mate. They have to find the matching heart to theirs that is posted on their back. The best games I found on holidays.kaboose.com . Good Luck! The kids will have fun no matter what you do. Their is also a freeze dance and musical chairs that are always fun ( mwe did musical chairs at Halloween and it was a lot of fun. We put pictures on each chair and then I would call out the picture. If it was on their chair they got a treat. No one was ever out so that was good. Also Pictionary and 20 questions are fun with Valentine words. We might do one of those.

kaboose.com has some great ideas!