In today’s lesson students will learn about positive affirmations, make an origami heart, write their affirmations on it, and decorate the classroom for Valentine’s Day.

This lesson will take about 45 minutes in total. It can be used with students of any age.

Step 1: Students will learn about positive affirmations. (5 minutes)

Watch the video. Ask students the following questions.

• What are the mother and daughter doing? Why?

The mother and daughter are saying positive affirmations! Ask students the following question.

• What are positive affirmations?

The answer is that positive affirmations are phrases that you say or write as if they are true, so that hopefully the phrases will become true.

Step 2: Practice listening to positive affirmations. (10 minutes)

Next tell students that they can sit anywhere they want in the room because they are going to close their eyes and listen to some positive affirmations.

Ask students to repeat the affirmations that they hear in the video. (If you have a shy class, then they can just close their eyes and listen to the positive affirmations instead.)

Ready? Instruct students to close their eyes, listen, and repeat after the video.

When the video is finished, ask students the following questions.

1. What are some of the affirmations that they heard?
2. How do they feel after they listened to the affirmations?
3. Would they like to listen to the affirmations again? Why or why not?

Step 3: Make an origami heart and write affirmations on the heart. (5-10 minutes)

Tell students that they are going to make an origami heart for Valentine’s Day and write a positive affirmation on their heart. Then they will use their hearts to decorate the classroom.

Pass out red or pink paper. Make sure the paper is cut into a square. The smallest square possible is 15 X 15 CM, but a larger square is preferable.

Once everyone has their paper, tell the students that they are going to watch a YouTube tutorial and follow along in order to make their hearts. The teacher can pause the video as often as necessary to make sure the students can keep up. (The video is on the channel Origami-Instructions.)

Step 4: Students will write a positive affirmation on their heart. (10-15 minutes)

After students have made their origami hearts, tell them they are going to write a positive affirmation on their heart.

First brainstorm a few ideas as a class.

Then let students choose whatever affirmation they wish to write on their heart.

When they are finished, students can decorate their hearts however they wish using whatever colors, stickers, or glitter they have available to them.

Step 5: Decorate the classroom. (5 minutes)

Next pass out sticky tape or blu-tack and let students stick their hearts up around the room. Once they’ve finished, have students sit back down in their seats.

Step 6: Read the positive affirmations. (5-10 minutes)

Finally give students time to stand up and read the positive affirmations written around the room.

After everyone has had a chance to read them all, ask students the following questions.

1. Which positive affirmations do you remember?
2. Which positive affirmations are the most meaningful or positive to you?

We hope you enjoyed this Valentine’s Day craft lesson. If you want another English lesson about Valentine’s Day, try English Conversation Lesson to Get Students Talking about Romance – Red Flags!.