Anyone remember? I seem to remember at least one year (2nd grade or so) when everyone was making Valentine’s Day cards for the members of the opposite sex in our class. And candy was involved… It’s all vague.
Anyone?
Yeah, it was so awesome. You would get a shoe box. Decorate it. Put a slit in the top and it would fill up with valentine cards. And those little candy hearts with messages. Yup. Good times!
I recall it as being a popularity contest of sorts, at least in the grades after 2nd or 3rd (when everyone got and gave a card from/to everyone else). I was not a big winner. Fortunately, I got over that a year or two ago. 
[ol]
[li]Decorate Box[/li][li]Get cards for everyone in class[/li][li]Sign cards[/li][li]Deposit cards into everyone else’s decorated box[/li][li]Get cards from everyone in class in my decorated box[/li][/ol]
It was never a contest at all, it was always assumed that you got one for everyone and no one deviated from that norm.
Pretty similar to my experience. It wasn’t a bad holiday in the early grades, but my family moved when I was just finishing 4th grade, and I found myself being a social outsider at the new school. This was also in the mid 1970s, and, at least at my school, there was no “you have to give a Valentine to everyone in the class” rule. So, Valentine’s Day in 5th through 8th grade (my elementary school was K-8 in one building) was pretty miserable for me.
This is my memory of elementary school. With the added step of everybody eating cupcakes or candy or something.
I don’t remember how much, if any, thought I put into which card to give which person, nor what if anything I read into which card I got from anybody else. Nor do I remember it being about romance or boy-girl stuff at that age, at least within the school classroom.
Making my Valentines box in third grade with the first and last time I ever stapled my thumb. Argh!
Ditto. I am not 100% sure I’m over it yet (and I’m almost 48.) 
Since there were 3 Valentine-giving-age kids in my family, and we were in the midst of the baby boomers with lots of kids in our classes, there was no way my mom could afford to buy enough cards for us to give to everyone, and pretty much all kids were in similar situations. I seem to recall Mom buying one package of cards that had to be divided among the 3 of us.
I mostly hated V-Day because I hardly got any cards. And no one gave out candy - again, parents couldn’t afford it. I’m talking mid-60s here.
This is exactly my experience K-6th grades. Sometimes we used a shoe box. Sometimes it was a paper lunch bag that we decorated. We did it in class as an art project. Everyone always got and gave a Valentine to every other student in class. We always had cookies, cupcakes and/or candy brought in by the room mothers. My mom was a room mother and sometimes she would make heart shaped cookies with everyone’s name on them in icing. That was cool.
My memory was that every Valentine’s Day, my mother would buy enough cards to give to all my classmates. I would stay up late the night before and put them in envelopes with their names. In class the next day, we’d have a Valentine’s Day party and exchange them. I don’t remember shoe boxes or anything like that, but I do remember getting lots of cards.
Maybe there were kids in my class that didn’t get very many cards. But it seemed to me that I wasn’t the only one who did a “mass mailing”. I gave cards to kids I didn’t even like.
This would be my memory. 1954-1956
Same here, in the 80s.
We brought cards in. I don’t believe candy was allowed.
We didn’t have to give cards to everyone. I had maybe 2, 3, 4 girls who I slipped cards to, and probably got cards from 6 or 8 girls in return. Somehow we did this anonymously, but I don’t recall the logistics.
Valentine’s day wasn’t fair back then: just like life.
You used to buy a box of cheap Valentine’s day cards and hand them out in class. Not to everyone, but since our classes were small (less than 25) you usually gave them to most everyone to use them up. Some people wouldn’t get cards from everyone, but there was not much comparing.
Yup. Seemed like everyone gave cards to everyone else. '90s.
Ditto for my school in West Texas in the 1960s.
I think we hand-made cards for our mothers, bought one for the teacher, and passed out cheap ones to kids of the opposite sex. I think we added short sayings to the cheap ones, depending on how we felt about the recipient. I don’t remember any decorated box, and I don’t remember getting any cards from other boys (that would come much later).
We had a rule that you gave a valentine to everyone. I remember, though, card makers still thought it was cute to put mushy messages on cards for grade school children. It was always difficult to find the least worst card for the stupid boys out of that one set of cards.
My mother would bake a set of very large heart shaped cookies once in our grade school years. The cookies would each have a classmates name on them. She couldn’t do it for all of us (lots of siblings) but she could do it just once for each of us. My year was, I believe, fourth grade. I was so proud of those things. Sadly, my children’s school has a store bought only rule so my children never got heart shaped cookies with everyone’s name piped in pink frosting on top. 
IIRC We were each given a list of names to give cards to. It worked out that everybody got 8 or 10 cards each. It was fun making the cards and including the candy hearts.