Valentine’s Day 2026 Teaching Resources

Get your classroom Valentine's Day 2026 ready with classroom decor, crafts, fun activities for kids, card templates and more ways to celebrate this heartfelt day with your students! The teachers of Teach Starter created this teaching resource collection — so you know every printable, every worksheet and every craft has been designed with teachers in mind!

Looking for Valentine's Day vocabulary words? How about Valentine math activities or templates to bring the February holiday into your reading centers? Yup, we've got you covered! Many of the resources are even curriculum-aligned, so you can satisfy those state standards while you're warming up those little hearts mid-winter.

Read on for a primer from our teacher team with everything you need to know to mark this day in the classroom, including when Valentine's Day will fall on the calendar and a simple definition to share with your students.

What Is Valentine's Day? A Kid-Friendly Definition

You may know what Valentine's Day is, but do you need an easy way to explain it to your students? Here's a simple definition from our teacher team to help:

Valentine's Day is a day when we show our love and affection for other people. We use this day to be extra kind to one another. Sometimes we exchange special cards called valentines in order to show people how much we care.

Where Did Valentine's Day Come From?

If you're teaching older students, you may want to dig deeper into Valentine's Day with a look at where it came from.

The origins of Valentine's Day as a celebration of romantic love are not entirely clear, but it is widely believed to have originated in ancient Rome as a festival honoring the goddess Juno, the queen of the Roman gods and goddesses.

The holiday is named after Saint Valentine, a Christian martyr who lived in the 3rd century.

Valentines — the special cards the day is known for — were not sent until the 18th century, when people in England began to make these special love notes by hand, exchanging them with people they loved.

When Is Valentine's Day 2026?

You probably know by now that the holiday is celebrated on February 14, but is Valentine's Day on a school day this year? The answer is no — it's a Saturday in 2026, and that means if you want to celebrate with your students, you will need to do so the day before on Friday.

While some schools ban Valentine's Day parties in the classroom, if yours is one where the holiday is celebrated, you might want to circle the Friday before in red. Or maybe add a heart?

How to Keep Valentine's Day Positive in Your Classroom

Valentine's Day can be a hard holiday for kids — after all, bullying and clique-ish behavior can easily run rampant on a day when cards are handed out in the classroom. Even when there are "everyone gets a card" rules in place, this holiday can easily go sideways.

Don't want to cancel the fun of the heartfelt holiday? Our teacher team has some tips to make sure Valentine's Day is positive in your classroom in 2024:

1.  If your class will perform a Valentine exchange, skip the process of card creation at home and stick to in-class card creation. While this will take more time out of your lessons, it will ensure children who do not have money to purchase cards are not left out of the celebration. No time for that? Use our printable Valentine cards for kids, and send the templates home to parents, so every child is on the same playing field.
2. Instead of enforcing an "everyone gets a card rule," be more specific. Instruct students to write one (or more) nice message(s) for each person in the class on their cards.
3. Create Valentines for veterans, nursing home residents, etc. Instead of creating cards for their classmates, why not focus on kindness and create Valentines for people in their community who are often forgotten? This allows kids to celebrate in a positive way and skirts the fraught issues inherent in a classroom exchange.
4. Make Valentines for a buddy class. Do you have a buddy class this school year? Have your students create cards for the students in that class rather than the students they see every day.