First-graders' Project Brings In Valentines From Across America
Northeast Elementary first-grade teacher Sue Peters and students Maverick Hansen and Izaleia Rodriguez check out the Hearts Around America map in a hallway outside their classroom.
Sue Peters and her first-grade class. Class members are Quinn Bailey, Kaiser Bissen, Odin Bruning, Ace Bullington, Jax Clayton, Payton Collins, Hailey Grooms, Maverick Hansen, Cora Marshall, Gabe Peters, Izaleia Rodriguez, Amelia Salmons, Carmen Sanchez, Luke Stanton, Elliott Weisenborn, Gabby Wiser and Griffin Wolfe Not present: Jacie Johnson, Cooper Meyers and Victoria Wray.
Students in Sue Peters’ first-grade class at Northeast Elementary School have been putting their hearts into a special Valentine’s Day / Geography project over the past month.
In mid-January, Peters put out the word on social media that her students were going to participate in a special Hearts Around America and Hearts Around the World initiative with the goal of getting a Valentine, postcard or special item from all 50 states and countries around the globe.
After Peters shared information about the project on a Facebook post, it didn’t take long for the Valentines to start arriving at the school. As of late last week, nearly 70 Valentines and postcards had been received from states across the U.S. and four countries in Europe. The
Valentines and postcards are displayed on a hallway bulletin board along with maps of the United States and the world. Red hearts are scattered across the maps indicating the origin of Valentines and postcards received so far.
“A friend of mine that I went to high school with, a teacher in her town of Baldwin, Kan., was doing it, so she sent me the post she had seen on that Facebook page. She said this sounds like something you might like to do in your class and I said it does sound fun,” said Peters. “I actually used the very same post the other teacher used - I just changed the name and address and I sent it out on my Facebook page. I told everybody to share it because we were going to try to get as many as we could.”
Peters also included information about the project in a classroom newsletter she sent home to parents. The parents helped spread the word.
“Everyone was super excited about it,” Peters said. “The parents shared it with their relatives and friends and people that are friends with me and a lot of other people were sharing it. I was getting a lot of comments back from people I didn’t even know. They were commenting because they got shared the post and it just spread like wildfire.”
On Jan. 31, Peters posted an update about the project on her Facebook page with a photo of the map and a list of states they hadn’t heard from.
“We’re starting to get some states that we didn’t have,” she said. As of late last week, Peters and her students were still hoping to get a Valentine or card from the northeastern states of New York, Vermont, Maine, New Hampshire, Delaware and Maryland. There were some others in the west, north and south they had not heard from – Wyoming, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, Arkansas, Mississippi and Louisiana, but Peters said she’s been told Valentines are on the way from some of those missing states.
The world map has hearts on four countries - Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Hungary.
Many of the Valentines have special messages on them addressed to the students, Peters pointed out.
“A really fun one that I really love is from my very first class of first graders here,” Peters said. “She, Leora (Darrah) Woodrow, wrote me from Tennessee. She wrote a little note in there that she had been in my first-grade class and I loved that one.
The first-graders in Peters class walk past the bulletin board together on a daily basis. They shared a rousing “Yes!” when asked how they’re enjoying the project.”
In addition to the fun associated with getting the Valentines, the first-graders are learning some geography along the way.
“Every day, we come back this way from our Specials class, we stop and we talk about what new states we’ve got and find them (on the map) where they are,” Peters said. “If they indicate on the card they are a relative (of a student), I tell them this is from your great aunt, uncle from wherever.”
Peters didn’t know what the response would be to the project and didn’t have a specific goal in mind when she started, but admitted she is pleased with the result.
“I was just hopeful that we’d get some, to be honest,” she said.
Peters said she expects some late-arriving Valentines and cards to trickle in past Valentine’s Day so the display will remain on the bulletin board through the month of February.