valentine surprise

Usually I find Valentine's Day somewhat obnoxious, leading to greed among the youngsters. However, today, my first graders were absolutely fabulous. We had created our own Valentines in class, homemade with a nice message written personally to each student. They checked off names on a class list as they finished the cards, to be sure everyone got one. So, when students opened up their Valentine bags today, I was delighted to hear them reading their cards aloud, smiling at the kindness of the other children. A couple of them were *so* attentive to reading each and every word that they were the last ones to make their ice cream sundaes!