Raining Hearts Word Game

Valentine’s Day gives us a fun excuse to make things out of hearts or do heart-shaped activities (like our Valentine’s Day science experiments).  After reading The Day It Rained Hearts by Felicia Bond, we were inspired to play a raining hearts word game. I hope you’ll like it, too! Affiliate links are included in this post. Thanks for supporting Inspiration Laboratories.

The Day It Rained Hearts by Felicia Bond

The Day It Rained Hearts is by Felicia Bond – the illustrator behind the popular If You Give a Mouse a Cookie book by Laura Numeroff. In the story, Cornelia Augusta finds herself in a peculiar rainstorm. It is raining hearts. Cornelia collects the hearts and begins to examine them and notices how different they each are. She knows just what to do with them. She makes cards with the different hearts for her friends. As you read the book, talk about who Cornelia’s friends might be. The heart with a cotton ball reminds you of what animal? The heart full of holes looks like cheese. What friend might like cheese? It’s a fun book that will inspire kids to make their own valentines for their special friends.

Raining Hearts Word Game

To go along with the book, I wanted an activity that involved raining hearts. I thought about hanging them from the ceiling and then remembered the hanging sight words activity from The Pleasantest Thing. We’ve been practicing word families lately so I let Aiden choose a new word family to learn. He chose the -ig family. I also used -at words. He’s a pro at these after our broom race and jingle bell word family sort.

Aiden used a heart punch to punch out lots of paper hearts for me. I wrote -ig words and -at words on the hearts.

I taped the hearts to red and white steamers. (I cut the streamers in half.) I then taped the streamers to our living room fan. I used masking tape because I wanted the streamers to come down easily. If you are worried about your fan falling down or breaking, attach the steamers to a doorway or the ceiling.

Now for the fun part. Have your child jump up and grab a heart. Then he has to read the word. If Aiden struggled, I asked him if it was an -at word or an -ig word. He then could sound out the beginning letter and combine it with the ending.

I love how versatile this game is. Use it to practice reading word families, sight words, or spelling words. Or place letters on the hearts and practice letter recognition or letter sounds.

How will you play?

Other Valentine Inspired Book Activities

• Make a hide and seek Valentine’s card inspired by Happy Valentine’s Day, Mouse! by Laura Numeroff.
• We’re joining with several other bloggers in sharing more ways to Read & Play with Valentine’s books. Stop by The Pleasantest Thing and check out all of the other valentine book ideas.

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