If Valentine's Day is about anything, it is about expressing your feelings to your loved ones. Have students write a heartfelt love letter to their mother, father or both. Ask them to list the qualities in their parents that they love. You can also have them imagine what they would miss most about their parents if they had to be separated for a long period of time. Get students to include at least one memory of when their parents made them feel especially loved.
Valentine's Day writing exercises can also take a more narrative form. Have students write a story in the first-person based on a memory of a close personal connection. This can be an moment between friends, family members or even someone they bonded with on vacation and never saw again. Have students narrate the story in writing, demonstrating what they learned about the meaning of love. Ask them also to consider how that moment affects their lives today.
The love poem is one of the best-known literary forms. Get your students to write their own love poems. This poem can be serious or more whimsical. Start by reading some examples of well-known love poems together. Some good examples are Shakespeare's sonnets and poems by the Romantics, such as Keats and Shelley. Have students think of someone or something they love along with the qualities about that person or thing that speak to them. They might write a serious love poem to a close friend, or a more comical love poem to a favorite video game or dish of food.
Store-bought valentines are famous for containing cliched messages. Get your students to exercise their creativity and create their own series of Valentine's Day messages. Have them think of catchy phrases, cliched or not, that encapsulate love. Choose the best ones and have students make valentines containing the phrases. Students can give these valentines to whomever they like, or have your class sell their valentines to the rest of the school as a fundraiser.