Usually, when I’m gearing up for Valentine’s Day crafts to share with parents and teachers, I focus on sharing beautiful and fun cards and crafts for children to make for their loved ones and classmates. However, this year, I wanted to dig a little deeper, and share some expressive Valentine art projects that can help students strengthen their emotional intelligence, and open up classroom discussions to talk about and teach empathy.
In a world where school bullying, cyber bullying, verbal abuse, harassment, anger, and even suicide rates among teens, are on the rise, I think empathy is extremely important for children to learn. And I think teachers are the best mentors and examples to help students understand and practice emotional intelligence and empathy.
Because Valentine’s Day is dedicated to love, I figured it’s the perfect time to teach children how to love each other—in a way that’s not focused on romance, of course. And I think, in teaching kids to be empathetic, we can teach them to love themselves and identify their own feelings as they look to understand the feelings of others. These types of lessons can also bring light to how their actions impact other students’ emotions. Valentine’s Day crafts can be structured to take advantage of all the talk about love and feelings, which prepares them for more complex conversations about empathy.
What is empathy?
Empathy is the ability to be aware of, understand, and/or imagine how someone else is feeling in a particular situation—and then respond with care. It’s actually a very complex skill to achieve, but again, it’s a very important one.
When a child is empathetic, that means they can:
- Understand that they are a unique individual, with their own thoughts and feelings,
- Acknowledge that other people may have different thoughts and feelings that their own,
- Notice facial cues and associate a relevant feeling or emotion to those expressions,
- Look at a situation and imagine how both they, and someone, else might feel in that moment, and,
- Think of and act on an appropriate response to that particular situation.
An example of empathy that you can share with students is:
If you notice that your friend is upset If you see your friend upset because they skinned their knee, and you understand they’re in pain, so you give them a hug and help them find a teacher who can help. Or… You see your friend get excited because they’re very proud of the way their art project came out, so you feel happy too, and give them a hug and a high five.
Importance of Empathy
The UN’s World Happiness report ranked Finland, Norway, Denmark, Iceland, and Switzerland as the world’s happiest countries; the United States came in at 18 on that list. In Denmark, emotional intelligence is a mandatory part of the national curriculum, and it’s taught from elementary to high school grades. Many teachers wholeheartedly believe that the reason they continuously rank so high for World Happiness is because of their mandatory empathy studies.
Of course, there are extreme negative outcomes that can come from children raised without empathy—including traits like narcissism, impulsiveness, and even psychopathy. People without empathy can’t identify with other people’s feelings and are less likely to help in dire situations. For example, there was a story in the news back in 2017, about a group of Florida teens who used their phones to record a man who was drowning, rather than attempting to help him or even calling him help; this shows a serious, devastating lack of empathy.
In fact, I’m so passionate about teaching empathy and emotional intelligence—especially through art—that I’ll actually be co-hosting a workshop on the subject this coming March, at one of the largest educational conferences in North America. Below, you’ll read some of the ideas I’ll be teaching during my class—Using Art for Emotional Literacy.
Where to Start: Valentine’s Day Crafts That Teach Empathy
Neuroscientists today all agree that our left and right brain are both equipped to learn emotional cues, directly affecting our response of empathy towards others. As a teacher, you can start raising awareness of emotional intelligence and impact your classroom and students by introducing simple empathy art projects during the school year. While these crafts have a Valentine’s Day theme, you can adjust them a bit to work any time of year.
Valentine’s Day Empathy Projects
- Personal Valentine’s Day Card – Have kids make themselves a crafted paper card and list reasons why they matter and what makes them unique and special. This can be a wonderful keepsake they can refer to when then need to be reminded that they are loved. (Check out this blog for a potato-stamp card craft.)
- Art Reflective Journal – Students will start by creating their own art journal, which they can use to answer prompts each week. If you theme prompts to be about feelings and emotions, or give them specific situations to respond to (hopefully empathetically), you’ll be helping them develop their emotional intelligence.
- Valentine’s Cards for the Community – Ask your students to make Valentine’s Day cards which they can give out to a worthy cause within your community. You can then drop them off to nursing home residents, patients in hospitals, people living shelters, or first responders.
- Collaborative Mural – Using the whole classroom’s creative input, create a mural with an empathetic or love-related theme. As a collaborative effort, have your students work together to paint or color the mural; then hang it in the classroom or somewhere in your school for them to admire and hopefully remind them of the beautiful things that can happen when they work together.
Article resources:
- United Nations World Happiness Report, 2019
- Bright Vibes; In Denmark, Empathy Classes are Part of the National Curriculum
- CNN, July, 21, 2017; Florida teens who recorded drowning man will not be charged in his death
One Step Further: Download My Art Language Cheat Sheet
Believe it or not, art is a fantastic way to introduce empathy to your students! It helps students view ideas and art mediums through different perspectives, which helps them practice seeing the different perspectives of their classmates and others. And using art terms is an important component of that; for example, you don’t use words like “good” or “bad” to describe art, instead, you use neutral terms, which helps to remind children that, again, there are different ways to look at things and one specific way isn’t always going to be correct.
Download my Beginner Art Language Cheat Sheet for a list of art language terms you can begin using in your classroom. It includes definitions for each term, so you’ll feel more confident knowing you’re using them correctly.
To download the Art Language cheat sheet, click here.
A Short Cut Just for You
It’s truly a solid foundation to help you teach art in your classroom (in a way that’s stress-free for you, and exciting and fun for your students!). To purchase Defining Visual Arts, click here.
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