Our Favorite Valentine’s Day STEM Activities

I asked my favorite STEM educators to share their favorite Valentine’s Day STEM or STEAM activities, and I just know you’ll LOVE these low-prep, high engagement STEM challenges. The GREAT news is these ideas all have downloadable resources that pair with them (available on Teachers pay Teachers), so if you want to really get the most out of these great STEM challenges and activities, check out the listings that go with each one.

STEM Team Building Challenges for Elementary Students on Valentine’s Day

Brooke Brown of Teach Outside the Box, and the creator of STEM Bins®, has created a set of Teambuilders for Valentine’s Day. What are Teambuilders? They are “low prep STEM Activities that are designed to foster student collaboration and build your classroom community.” That sounds like the perfect way to build friendships on this fun holiday!

I know you’ll enjoy these six Valentine’s themed challenges with your students. Add these to your makerspace, STEM stations, or have them available for your early finishers.

Recommended grades: K-5

Heavy Hearts STEM Challenge – A Math-Based STEM Activity for Elementary Through Middle School STEM

Kerry Tracy of Feel-Good Teaching knows that low-prep STEM challenges don’t have to skimp on rigor! Students will endeavor to find the “heaviest” heart: Point values are assigned to each color group based on its size. Students arrange various configurations of their smaller hearts inside a large, outer heart in order to create the “heaviest” possible heart. Put your students’ spacial skills to the test with this creative STEM activity!

One teacher writes, “I used this activity during Valentines week and my students absolutely loved the hands on experience. I had them work in pairs and find ways to create the heaviest heart together. They enjoyed teamwork and applying all their skills to try to build the heaviest heart. There are so many different ways to adapt this activity for your classroom.”

Recommended grades: 2-8

Paper Hearts Balancing Tower STEM Challenge for Valentine’s Day

This paper heart challenge is one of two STEM challenges included in Meredith Anderson – Momgineer’s Cardiac STEM Resource. For this challenge, you’ll just need paper, tape, and scissors…with a dash of patience and creativity! Students will need put on their thinking caps to determine the trade-off between paper strip width and heart size when it comes to stability and tower height!

The concept of this STEM challenge is simple but to be successful, students will need to experiment with different heart sizes, paper widths, and even where they secure the paper to create the heart (the bottom point vs. the point where the two curved parts of the heart meet). Perseverance is the name of the game with this one!

Recommended grades: 3-6

Do YOU know who invented candy hearts? Find out and try this challenge, too!

Wendy Goldfein and Cheryl Nelson, the brains behind Get Caught Engineering, have created a series of activities that not only tackle the STEM challenge, but also include a reading comprehension/history component to these lessons.

Julie writes, “I like the reading portion of this STEM challenge. To be honest, I wasn’t sure if my students would feel challenged by the two activities. However, I was very pleasantly surprised! This had to be one of their favorite STEM challenges for the year. Thank you for a great Valentine’s Day activity!”

You will be “2 CUTE” when you try this STEM activity with your students!

Recommended grades: 4-7

Do you have a favorite Valentine’s Day STEM challenge you’ve done with your students or kids? Let us know in the comments!

Save these ideas for later or share in your stories!