Valentine's Day Postcards

In celebration of the upcoming Valentine's day (and my birthday) I am bringing you last year's Valentine's Day "craft"!  It is not as easy to come up with fun holiday crafts in fifth grade.  Either they have already done them or most of the ideas are a little too cheesy, but the kids still LOVE doing stuff.  So we decided to make a Valentine's Day craft/memento.  Did you know that you could send your prepackaged valentine to Loveland, Colorado, and they will send it off to your loved one with their yearly art work/poem stamp?  Who wouldn't love to get a valentine from the Sweetheart City?!  I have also heard that other cities like Kissimee, Florida and places with themed names like that will do this but Loveland is the most famous.  I always tell the kids it's like getting a letter from Halloweentown for Halloween!  I know it seems a little redundant to send them all the way to Colorado and then have Colorado send them back but it's something different and fun :o)

This past year I created a postcard template and my students spent about a week designing the front of their postcard and writing a special message on the back to their parents.  I liked this project a lot more than I thought I would and the kids did too!  It helped them with their letter writing and envelope labeling skills and showed me that sometimes we really take the little things for granted (like kids not knowing they need to put the recipient's name above the address).  And who doesn't love to get a piece of mail that isn't a bill?  Even the kids were excited to receive the postcard at home and it wasn't even for them!

The template with a note to my old coworker

Once our final product was finished I sent the postcards off to Loveland, CO, they stamped them and sent them back to us.  The neat thing about this is that every year the city holds a contest for the artwork of that year's stamp.  So every year you can expect something new!  Here are a few of their masterpieces and what it looked like when it was returned.

 

Yes, I am aware that this student wrote Valentime's Day... (agh, one of my biggest pet peeves!)  Even after editing it is apparently still ingrained in her head, lol.  What can you do?  I liked that this was a new twist on the ordinary Valentine craft and hope that you enjoy it just as much!

Sabra