With Valentine’s Day around the corner, your kids will be overwhelmed with heart-shaped candy and all the lovey-dovey excitement of the holiday! We have four fun and engaging STEM activities that will harness the extra energy for a comprehensive learning experience.
Valentine’s Day STEM Catapult challenge- Click to see product
The most loved STEM challenge in our classroom is building catapults! While catapults were originally invented as weapons of war, this Valentine’s Day themed catapult challenge comes with a message of spreading love.
As a class, we discuss the different necessary components of catapults and how they work (resources provided in our product). Then, using common materials like soda cans, rubber bands, spoons, and popsicle sticks, kids design and build two catapults. Use candy hearts, heart shaped marshmallows, or other festive items as projectiles! Note: make sure you have plenty as some of the candy may be devoured before testing! The catapult designs are tested in three different stations – accuracy, power, and a tower challenge. By perfecting their distance (power) and accuracy control, teams bring those two skills together for an exhilarating challenge of knocking down a tower in the final testing station.
The math extension questions at the end of the lesson add depth to the kids understanding of what they just experienced while also sharpening their math skills. Our included worksheets cover the effects of launch angle and review graphing, ratios, percentages, and averaging. This challenge will keep your kids engaged and send their hearts and spirits flying!
Valentine’s Day STEM Candy Grabber Challenge – click to see product
Bring biomedical engineering and prosthetics into your learning environment with the Candy Grabber STEM challenge! Students are guided through the engineering design process to create a candy grabber. This is basically an arm extension to pick up Valentine’s Day candy. Using the page provided in our product, students discover how common and useful levers are in manipulating force. This key concept will help form some creative candy grabber designs! After completing the STEM challenge, students answer the included math extension problems practicing area, percentages, and graphing. Also included is a career connection illustrating how the concepts and math used in the lesson relate to real-world professions. This activity highlights the job of a prosthetists and how they create replacement limbs that function similarly to the kids’ candy grabber designs!
Valentine’s Day Frog STEM challenge – click to see product
The Valentine’s Day Frogs STEM Challenge puts those fine motor skills to work by incorporating origami! Kids create origami jumping frogs (they really jump!). Then they walk through the engineering design process to create a candy holder for their frog. The frog must hop carefully to deliver their valentine message without dropping the candy!
For more information on this fun activity and a simplified activity to do with even the youngest STEMists in class or at home, visit our post here.
Valentine’s Day Heart Rate Math Activity – click to see product
Work off all of the sugary Valentine’s Day candy and learn about heart rate health with our Heart Rate Math Activity lesson. Between doing jumping jacks and discovering the strength of their heart, students practice percentages, graphing, and critical thinking with the applied math problems. Next, they discuss the careers that use the calculations they just completed by using the provided career connection handouts. Kids with a strong interest in athletics or those needing extra math practice will especially benefit from this active lesson!
Valentine’s Day Heart Rate Math activity – click to see product
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