Filled with self-love: a heartfelt classroom activity

During the month of February, we focus a lot on ways to show our love towards others, so much so that sometimes we forget about the most important person in our lives: ourselves.

Let’s get our students and children filled with self-love with a fun writing activity that can be adapted to any age group! Lead students through the activity by following these steps:

1. Introduce the prompt. Before taking out paper and pencil, lead a discussion (at home or in the classroom) about self-love. Brainstorm things each individual loves about themselves. Show students what the final product will look like! You can adapt it to have as many hearts (things they love about themselves) as you’d like. 
2. Outline. Use whatever method your students are comfortable with. I display a slide with an outline, and give them a topic sentence. Depending on their ability level, you can guide their writing more or less. You can come up with the topic sentence together, too! In my third grade classroom, I encourage students to pick three things they love about themselves. They then provide a detail or example of each as well. Be sure to discuss the expectations up front such as how many sentences and how much elaboration you want them to add. This is all dependent on the skill levels of your students. 
3. Rough draft. This step is very important even in a fun project! I always have my students create a rough draft so it gets them used to the writing process. I do not like to skip it even if it is for a fun activity. It causes them to appreciate their final product more, too!
4. Editing. Whether you edit for them, peer edit or self-edit, be sure everyone takes this step. Editing is a great skill to have, especially for our older kids that will be state testing. It’s a lesson itself within a lesson. 
5. Final product. The fun part! Bust out the coloring utensils of your choice, print copies of the template and allow their creative sides to take over. The only expectation on my part would be that they write the things they love about themselves in their hearts, and write out their final draft neatly. The rest is up to them! 

If they choose to use the second option in the template without hearts, they can glue on heart cutouts instead. The options with this activity are endless!

What are other ways to incorporate self-love activities at home or in the classroom? Let us know at @ArizonaEducator on Twitter or Arizona PBS KIDS on Facebook!

Examples

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About the author

Marissa Will is the mother of two, Olivia (6) and Logan (4). Writing was her first passion: she’s a freelance writer and a Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication alumna. Will is currently educating the future leaders of tomorrow: She has spent the past nine years educating third grade with a master’s degree in elementary education from Northern Arizona University-Yuma.