Valentine's Day STEM Adventure with Cupid

Fun STEM Activities for Elementary Students on Valentine's Day

Candy Heart STEM That is Easy to Implement

This is the third installment of the "Pick the Path STEMventure" series. I wrote a short story about Cupid for Valentine's Day. Don't worry, there's no lovey-dovey stuff. In the story, Cupid is helping kids and animals work through some quarrels. Each choice leads to a STEM challenge, so that in completing the story students will complete 3-4 challenges. The story not only guides them through the engineering design process, it includes design constraints and areas for them to fill in their thoughts, plans, and testing data.

One Challenge All Students Complete - Unplugged Coding

Not all kids love coding, but it is still great to expose them to simple logic problems that are the basis of coding. Creating a path is a simple way to have kids think ahead and plan out a set of directions - this can be useful in many other non-coding areas, such as cooking, following a map, or even executing a detailed set of drills at soccer practice! The story is set up in such a way that all students will walk through this particular challenge, though the other challenges presented are up to the student. The other challenges include:

• a candy heart tower
• a candy heart maze
• a container that holds candy hearts
• a parachute for Cupid
• a bow for Cupid (optional, for any class that has a serious case of shoot-your-eye-out-itis)

You can do the challenges above (aside from the coding one) without the resource I created. Here are some examples of the others, including STEM activities with conversation hearts:

Other ideas for Candy Heart STEM

• Create a pattern with the hearts and have someone else decipher it. Is it by color? By saying? Something else?
• Create a candy heart launcher! 
• Set up an experiment to try and figure out the fastest way to dissolve candy hearts. Is it with cold water? Warm water? Water with baking soda in it? Milk (if no allergies)? Something else? Get ideas from students and see if they have any creative solutions to try!

Find this STEM Resource on Teachers pay Teachers

If you would like to use the story and printables I've created, you can find them on Teachers pay Teachers at this link Valentine's Day STEM:

or save these ideas for later by pinning this on Pinterest: