Three Easy and Fun Valentine’s Day Spanish Activities

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Three easy and fun Spanish Activities for Valentine’s Day. These Spanish language activities require almost no prep and are tons of fun for all Spanish language learning levels. Spanish teachers will find listening, grammar, and vocabulary activities that will give every student a big sonrisa!

I absolutely love el día de San Valentín– and I love celebrating it with high school kids. You can take one of the most angst-ridden days of the year and turn it into an absolutely cringe-worthy (in the best possible way) lesson on commands, vocabulary, accents, and listening!

Overview

I have two favorite activities for Valentine’s Day, and each takes about 15-20 minutes. So these activities will basically fill a whole period. You don’t have to do them right on Valentine’s Day either- really any time in the week before or after el día del amor y la amistad is perfect.

If you have a block period and a bigger chunk of time or you are working on a writing standard- I have the perfect sponge activity. Teaching Native Speakers? I have activities for that too!

The key to all these lessons is to not take yourself too seriously. I would always wear a super cheesy Te Amo shirt to class, and sing at the top of my lungs to the Juan Gabriel song. The more eyes that were rolling in my direction, the better. It’s a good reminder to the kids not to take Valentine’s Day too seriously, and to have fun!

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Querida Spanish Song Listening Activity

One of the most famous Spanish love songs was sung by none other than Juan Gabriel- the Mexican mega-superstar who passed away in 2016. You can check the Juan Gabriel Wiki here.

Querida is a slow song that builds up to some very cheesy 80s horn riffs and an epic howl by none other than Juan himself. The song is perfect for the following activities in the Spanish classroom:

Spanish 1 and Spanish 2: An introduction to new Valentine’s Day vocabulary related to love and friendship- and a chance to practice pronunciation while singing. I pulled out some of the simple words that are more clearly pronounced in the song for students to listen and fill in on their worksheets. 

Upper-Level Spanish: Practicing commands. The song combines both regular and irregular commands, and those are the lyrics I’ve pulled out for the students to fill in. A great bellringer or warmup for this day is to have the kids conjugate ver, amar and decir into the command forms and use them in a sentence to get warmed up and to remember that not all commands follow the same rules! If you want to give them a challenge- add textear! The -ear always gets the kids and it’s a fun Spanglish verb.

Spanish For Native Speakers and AP Spanish: The song is a great cultural lesson- everyone’s parents know it, and many of the kids will be familiar with Juan Gabriel. You can talk about why some commands have accents and others do not, or you can just enjoy the song as a fun listening activity.

The original song is epically cheesy and perfect- you can find original music video, with audio, in all it’s 80s cheesiness here:

Or, you can use this as an opportunity to introduce your students to Juanes, as he and Juan Gabriel re-recorded a modern version of the song in 2015- just before Juan Gabriel passed away.

Finally- Juan Gabriel had a difficult fall off of the stage while performing in Texas in 2005. He ended up with a fractured neck, a canceled tour, and the butt of every joke on Spanish language television for months. Honestly- the fall is tragic but also epically hilarious. If you want to share it with your students, you can find a good version here: 

Click here to purchase the Printable Querida Valentine’s Day Song Lyrics Activity

Conversation Hearts Spanish Translation Activity

One of the first years I was teaching Spanish, I can’t remember what level it was, I realized that I was teaching commands and that Valentine’s conversations hearts are basically all commands. And thus the perfect Spanish Valentine’s day lesson was born 

Well- that was a perfect teaching opportunity! So I whipped up a simple little Conversation Hearts Translation Activity and had the kids work on it while I played Querida over and over and made them yell dime cuando tú. (Kidding- sort of, haha). Here’s how I did it for each level:

Spanish 1 and Spanish 2: Kids were in partners, and had to decipher the conversation hearts. A point for every translation they get correct in a certain amount of time, the winners get to eat extra candy hearts! Sometimes, I could find the conversation hearts in Spanish, in which case I would buy a bag of each English and Spanish and have the kids match them for a manipulative activity. 

Upper-Level Spanish: Have the kids try to translate for 5 minutes on their own- and then let them get in partners and decipher the rest. Make sure to talk about accent placement- and remember the rule about the third vowel form the end has the accent with commands!

Spanish for Native Speakers and AP Spanish: With Native Speakers, I generally gave them the hearts in English, and then had them translate them to Spanish on their own piece of paper. I would then have the kids pick a translation and write it on the board and we would check them with spelling and accents. 

Shop conversation hearts here!

A fun conversation around this activity or advanced students would be ways to spell some of the translations in slang. For example, the English conversation heart reads “date nite” even though that’s technically a grammar error. You can ask the students “what are some ways we would adapt that concept to Spanish?” (For example, te kiero in place of te quiero). 

Click here to purchase the Valentine’s Day Conversation Hearts Activity.

Make Your Own Spanish Valentine – Spanish Writing Activity

Finally, for a nice little sponge activity at the end of the period, I would have my students make another teacher a Valentine in Spanish. 

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I provided pink, red and white paper, markers, and scissors and glue- sometimes heart stickers from the Dollar Bin. The students were able to make a simple card for a teacher of their choice- and at the end of the day, I’d deliver the notes to the teacher’s mailboxes. You could also have them make cards for friends and family.

It was always so fun to see the teacher’s reactions- some had no idea what the cards said and would start a conversation about that with the students. Other teachers knew a lot of Spanish but had never shared that with their students and it was also a great conversation. Plus, it’s a great way to spread a little love to the staff on Valentine’s Day. 

For Spanish 1, you may want to provide some sentence starters on the board and some additional vocabulary. 

And that’s it- an easy and fun Valentine’s Day activity that uses the target language and teaches some culture too. What do you do to celebrate Valentine’s Day in your Spanish class? Let me know in the comments- and don’t’ forget to pin this post for later!

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