Valentine's Day Read Alouds and STEM Challenges
The following is a guest post from Dr. Jacie Maslyk.
Love is in the air! As we approach Valentine’s Day, it’s time to choose read aloud selections to share with our students. There are some amazing books on friendship, kindness, and love.
This post will share a few of our favorites, along with some hands-on STEM and engineering challenges to extend student thinking while incorporating hands-on engagement.
Lessons for each of these ideas can be found in our TpT Store or in the STEM Teachers Club Membership.
The Invisible String by Patrice Karst & Geoff Stevenson
The story begins with twins Jeremy and Liza being awakened by a thunderstorm and running to their mom for comfort. Mom sends them back to bed and tells them about the “invisible string.”
She explains that whenever they are missing her, their love travels along the string, and she feels it tug on her heart, the same way they feel it in their hearts when she tugs back.
The story is a sweet way to show we are all connected by an invisible string. Even though you can’t see it, you can feel it with your heart. With a focus on love and connection, the message of the story is that no matter how far away a loved one may be, no one is ever alone.
Challenge:
Any type of hands-on extension will reinforce student understanding, as well as increase student engagement. One fun challenge is to have students build a maze using magnets. In this STEM Lesson, students design a Maze to connect 2 people using an invisible force, magnetism.
They learn about how magnets work and use them to help their heart connect through the maze like an invisible string! They can work with a partner or small group and design and build it together.
Love Grows Everywhere by Barry Timms & Tisha Lee
In the children’s book Love Grows Everywhere, we meet a family who grow plants and sell them in their local market. Readers discover the different relationships that exist in the home and within the community. Told in rhyme, the story shared the importance of love and connections with others.
Not only does the story share a positive message, it also offers opportunities to foster social emotional learning skills like social awareness.
Challenge:
Within the theme of everything growing, try this flower design challenge where students can design and construct a flower using craft materials. They can use any type of clean recyclables to create plants and flowers out of plastic or cardboard. Students might also think about creating a plan for a real school garden or engineer a tool that could help in the garden.
The Love Letter by Anika Aldamuy Denise and Lucy Ruth Cummins
On a walk one morning, Hedgehog finds a love letter. The letter makes him feel happy and special. That day, he treats his friends with extra kindness and love. When the letter falls out of the hedgehog's backpack, Bunny finds it and thinks it’s a letter for her.
At home, she is more pleasant and helpful than usual, because the letter has made her feel special. Soon after, the squirrel finds the letter and heads home with a positive attitude too.
With each animal thinking that one wrote a letter for them, they are all surprised to find out that the mouse actually wrote the letter for the moon. The friends all discover that no matter who wrote it or who found it, it made them all feel loved.
Challenge:
On Valentine’s Day, we write cards or letters for our friends, too. For this challenge, students will add a little technology to their designs as they make circuit cards. Using their STEM knowledge about circuits, Students will design and create a light up card to give to a friend.
Use the Valentine's Day circuit card template or have students create one on their own.
Love Monster and the Last Chocolate by Rachel Bright
When the love monster arrives home from his adventure in the woods, he finds a box of chocolates at his doorstep. He felt quite excited about all of the different types of chocolate treats that might be inside.
He thought about sharing his chocolates with his friends but worried about whether his favorite ones would be left for him. He went inside his house and planned to eat everything for himself, but finally decided to go find his friends and share with them.
His friends actually cared so much about him that while he was gone, they saved his most favorite candy for him which was sitting in the box. True friendship means sharing and caring about others beyond themselves, an important lesson for students to learn.
Challenge:
Love monster’s candy box was a simple rectangle shape but candy boxes can come in all shapes and sizes. In this challenge, students can work together to design and build a box to hold their favorite candies. The Candy Box Holder Challennge incorporates creativity into paper construction in a way that can be colorful and fun.
Porcupine Cupid by Jason June & Lori Richmond
Porcupine is using his quills to poke the other animals in the forest. They do not like it at all and start to get angry. Porcupine secretly puts up a sign to have a town hall meeting to discuss his poking. The meeting really serves as a way to bring everyone together. When the animals gather for the meeting, they begin to make friends—and maybe even a love for Valentine’s Day.
Challenge:
Instead of poking everyone like Porcupine did, the tale goes that Cupid would shoot a bow and arrow to make people fall in love. In this challenge students will design and construct their own bow and arrow. Check out the Cupid's Bow and Arrow STEM Challenge for easy to use templates and directions for student use:
Love, Z by Jessie Sima
One day, Z the robot finds a mysterious message in a bottle. The contents of the message were all blurred except for the words “Love, Beatrice.” The robot wasn’t sure what love was. His robot family didn’t understand this word either, so he set off on an adventure to find Beatrice.
On his quest he met different animals and people who shared what love meant to them. He finally met Beatrice only to learn that he had known love all along from his robot family who cared for him.
Challenge:
Since coding is an important part of robotics, the Cupid Coding Scavenger Hunt is the perfect way to get kids thinking. Students will create the code to help Cupid find the things that they need. Helpful templates make this an easy-to-use activity for a whole class lesson, small group activity, or learning center.
How to Catch a Loveosaurus by Alice Walstead & Andy Elkerton
Can you catch the magical Loveosaurus? The kids in the story are trying to trap a dinosaur that escaped from the museum. It’s not like any dinosaur you’ve researched before. This one just wants to spread love and kindness. The story shares different STEAM concepts while the silly capture ensues.
Challenge:
How will your students capture the loveosaurus? Working in small groups, teams will design and construct a way to catch the loving dinosaur.
Engineering design challenges can be a great way to develop creative thinking and problem solving skills. Connecting challenges to great children’s literature selections will help to engage your students.
If you are looking for more ways to foster creativity through engineering and design, here are some additional challenges for February.
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An educator for the last 23 years, Dr. Jacie Maslyk, has served as a classroom teacher, reading specialist, elementary principal, and assistant superintendent. She is the author of STEAM Makers: Fostering Creativity and Innovation in the Elementary Classroom, Connect to Lead: Power Up Your Learning Network to Move Your School Forward (ISTE), Remaking Literacy: Innovative Instructional Strategies for Maker Learning and Unlock Creativity: Opening a World of Imagination With Your Students. You can read more on her blog, Creativity in the Making, at www.jaciemaslyk.blogspot.com. Connect with Jacie on Twitter @DrJacieMaslyk or email her at jaciemaslyk@gmail.com .