Welcome to the Elementary STEM Coach Podcast. I’m your host, Naomi Meredith, a former classroom teacher turned K-5 STEM teacher and coach. With over a decade of experience teaching and a master’s degree in STEM leadership, I’m here to coach you throughout the year to help you gain back more time to create innovative experiences for your students.

If you’re looking for some easy, low prep, Valentine’s Day STEM activities, you are in the right place. I have a collection of STEM activities that you can implement right now and you most likely already have the materials or you can grab them very, very quickly. So let’s jump in.

I know it’s been a little while since I’ve had a new episode, just a week or two. I was having some technical difficulties on my end. I record in Zoom and there were some things where they had to fix the video and you’re listening to the audio right now and you’re like, it doesn’t really matter, I’m listening.

But 99% of my episodes, I actually simultaneously record the video and end up using those clips in different ways. And I was having issue where it was super, super pixelated. I did everything that I could and then I actually had to message the support team and they had to fix some things for me.

So I’m really, really hoping that the quality of the video comes out a lot better because it was not looking good. So here we are. I am currently in the last week of my K through five STEM long-term subbing.

And I am recording this on Monday. The episode comes out on Tuesday because I wanted you to hear this in real time. And the things I’m gonna talk about, like I said in the intro, are very, very easy and things that you can implement very quickly because I did.

I planned them in the morning and I figured it out that afternoon. So it’s very simple. You can modify as needed and the kids will have a lot of fun.

Back to the subbing. If you’re wondering how that went, I do have an episode in the works, but in the meantime, feel free to email me or send me a DM on Instagram at Naomi Meredith underscore and ask me whatever questions I should answer on that episode because my experience was very unique. It was about four months and a little bit different than what a long-term STEM sub might be like.

And so I wanna hear what you wanna know and I will talk about it in a very near episode. Also, if you want some more February-themed STEM activities, I have some other episodes you can check out after this one. Make sure to go back and listen to episode 55 where I have five STEM activities for February.

Then also check out episode 58 where I have three Black History Month STEM activities for you to try. So those definitely go along with what I’m gonna be talking about today. The first STEM challenge that you can do that is Valentine’s Day-themed is this candy heart STEM basket challenge.

I went over to Target today and went and bought some of those sweetheart candies. You could use some plastic ones or you could even make some paper ones if you really wanted to try this in a different way or even 3D print some. But I have those little candy hearts and students are challenged with creating a basket that will hold as many hearts as possible.

To build the baskets, again, you can use anything else that you have on hand. I am going to use straws, masking tape, pipe cleaners, and pieces of cardboard. In fact, I’m gonna be teaching this this afternoon at my STEM Explorers Club.

The kids are gonna build their baskets first and then I will give them the candy where they can see how many fit inside. I most likely will give them one piece of candy so that they can test to see if the candy will slide out, how big the holes are in their design. So this can be a quick one day STEM challenge or if you wanna go a little bit longer and really go through the engineering design process, you definitely could.

I do have a TPT product that goes through that whole process from the planning stages all the way to the share. So again, it could be a quick one day STEM challenge like I’m doing in 45 minutes or you could extend it for a couple of days. The next Valentine’s Day STEM activity is implementing an engineer inspiration board.

I have a variety of these engineer inspiration boards that are themed for every month and for every major holiday and super, super easy, again, to implement. I like to display the inspiration board. I’m using the Valentine’s Day themed one.

I like to display it on the board and it’s all these fun little things that relate to Valentine’s Day that are kid appropriate like chocolate, teddy bears, a Valentine, a mailbox and using the materials I put out, I usually will put out Lego bricks, different types of cubes. I’ve done pattern blocks before. Students create these images in a way that they think makes sense.

So it might seem, oh, that’s too simple. They’ll always do the same thing. They really don’t.

They do change it up all the time. My group last week actually made really cute hearts out of Lego bricks that I lined them up on the shelf. I need to take a picture before I put them away.

They are so cute and I actually showed the kids. I have a picture of myself from last year standing next to a giant Lego heart myself and they could not believe it. It was these big giant Lego bricks at this event I went to, super cool.

And so then the kids all started building them. So that was really, really fun. Depending on how the class goes, I might show this video at the end or at the beginning but I love the video by SciShow Kids where they show how they create glass candy hearts.

I don’t do this experiment with kids. It’s with hot sugar. They have to do some melting.

You could do this with your own children at home but it’s a really cool experiment for kids to watch and the candy actually looks pretty good. So again, a very, very easy thing to implement. If you don’t want to display the board on the screen, you could even print them out smaller and have this at a STEM station.

Speaking of STEM stations, here are four easy STEM stations. Again, that are Valentine’s themed that your kids will love. And in fact, my students love them so much.

I ended up having a choice day. So I did STEM stations for two days. They did, there’s four stations.

They did two each day. And then on the third day, because I see the same kids five days in a row, on the third day, they actually got to choose their two favorite stations. So they really, really enjoyed these and they were very easy to set up for kids to clean up, to implement.

I took video of me setting them up because they were that easy. When I do the two stations a day, I like to take their pictures when they’re at their second station and upload them to Seesaw. So on the next day, when we do the two other stations, I put their picture up on the screen and I say, if you see your face, you have to stand up and you’ll go to the next station.

And they never know what the picture’s gonna look like the day before. So you think it’s so funny when they see their own face. So that’s a fun way to keep track of your STEM stations in a less informal way.

I don’t know all their names. It’s actually been really, really helpful to do it this way. I like to plan my STEM stations with each letter of STEM.

So an S, science, T, technology, E, engineering, and M, math. There is some overlap with these STEM stations, but you can do them in any order. You could change what goes where, but this is like how I like to think through stations and make sure I have a balance of activities.

For the science station, some of you commented on my Instagram stories when I posted a video about this, but it was a ping pong roll. All you need for this station are Kiva style planks. So Kiva planks are a brand, but there are many other brands that are very similar.

Have those wooden planks, plastic straws that have not been touched, so clean brand new straws, and ping pong balls. I had pink ping pong balls that I drew hearts on and the kids were obsessed about that little detail. What kids are going to do is with those wooden planks, they are going to build a maze on the floor.

Then using the straw, they’re going to blow through the straw and try to move the ping pong ball through their maze. Now you might be thinking, oh my gosh, what do they do with the straw? How do you make sure they don’t keep it? Here was my little trick. At the end of the STEM station, when it was time to clean up, that station was the first station I went to and I said, hey, hold your straw in the air.

So all the kids hold their straw in the air. It was on the floor, they had to pick it up. They’re all holding the straw in the air.

And then I had a trash can right at their station that they had to all go. And I physically watched every single one of them throw their straw away before they cleaned up anything else. I also had six ping pong balls at that station.

They had to count and make sure all six were there before they rotated. So they couldn’t say, oh, I lost it. If they lost track of the ball, they have to go find it.

And I haven’t lost any since. So that is a good strategy to keep track of their materials. They really, really liked this station.

Someone also asked me, was there a lot of spit? There really wasn’t. They were very careful and understood. You didn’t have to blow very hard for the ping pong ball to roll.

So it was totally fine. It wasn’t gross. It was safe.

Everything was good to go. For the technology station, again, very, very easy. I found a website that was online tangrams.

There are quite a few options. I was trying to find more specifically Valentine’s Day. There are, I’ve seen online, different Valentine’s themed cards you could do for this, but I wanted some technology.

So the kids would scan the QR code. I taught them how to scan a QR code, kindergarten through second grade. And they scan that QR code that took them to the Tangrams website.

What I liked about it is that they could tap on the iPad to turn the shapes and then move them where they wanted. If they were a little bit close, then there was a solve button that they could click and it would show them what the answers were. So there was a couple like Valentine-y type shapes.

There was a swan, a heart, there was a boat. So you could make it Valentine-y themed. Kind of a close connection, not exact, but they really enjoyed it.

And most kids actually hadn’t done Tangrams before. And this was a good challenge for them for their spatial awareness and their focus and even some technology skills and not giving up when things are hard. So I definitely recommend adding in Tangrams, whether it’s the physical ones or a digital platform that is self-checking.

I also really have enjoyed using Tangrams that are on the Osmo app, which I know for a bit you couldn’t use the app, but then maybe it’s back. The classroom I’m in doesn’t have enough of that kit. So I couldn’t implement the Osmos for a STEM station.

So that’s why I use the iPads, which again, this was a website. So this is all linked in the show notes, by the way, everything that I’m talking about. So you could use this on a Chromebook and be just fine.

For the E for Engineering station, kind of similar but different to the ping pong ball one is the students were creating heart marble mazes. I had six Lego base plates at the station, six marbles and a bucket of mixed Lego bricks. And students were challenged to create a heart that a marble could roll through and have a clear start and finish.

This actually took a lot longer than they thought. And the kids came up with some really cool things in their mazes. Use some of those doors where the marble could roll through and then they would close the door so the marble couldn’t go backwards.

They would use the pieces in creative ways. They added little ramps. It was so cute to see all of their designs and a lot of fun.

I would say the hardest part about this station is the cleanup because they get very into their maze. They want to save their design. I do not have kids save their work very often, but I will let them take it home by taking a picture.

So there weren’t enough iPads to leave at the station for them to do this. So I would go to that station, take a picture real quick on my phone and seesaw and then just upload it to their profile. So that’s a really good strategy as well.

You have a lot less tears because they know their work is saved in some way and their family can see it. And the last Valentine’s STEM station that you can try is having Cuisinere Rod Hearts. I don’t know if I’m saying that name correctly.

This is the first time I have seen this math manipulative, which I had found in this teacher’s closet. And the Cuisinere, Cuisinere, I am so sorry. You might be yelling at the audio right now, like this is how you say it, Naomi.

I’m sorry, I don’t know. And I didn’t look it up before recording this. But you have those little manipulatives and they’re cool because they’re measured in centimeters.

So if you stack one of each kind in a whole row, it makes like a staircase and they’re all different colors, but depending on the size, they have a specific color. So it’s not random. So the one centimeter cubes are all a lighter white color.

So at this station, you probably guessed it. They are building hearts with these little rods. And then after they built their heart, they had to count and write how many of each color that they used.

If you wanted to add even more math to this to make it more advanced, you could have students even add up the measurements and create a total amount of their heart. So you could even challenge what is the greatest length of your heart that you could build. That’s not a great way of wording that, but you know what I’m saying.

So they build a heart and then they line up all of the rods and they could add up all the measurements. They don’t technically need a ruler. They could, if you don’t tell them the measurements, they could figure out what the measurement is, then build the heart.

Then they add up all of the measurements of the rods. That could actually take all day if you have plenty for all the kids. That would definitely be really good for your third, fourth, and fifth graders, as a matter of fact.

But for kindergarten through second grade, I had them just count and write how many of each color. And they really liked using these as a building tool. They said they had never seen these before.

And it was a good thing to add to your classroom. Like I said, it’s something I hadn’t seen before, but something I’m gonna be looking for either on Amazon or Facebook Marketplace, because this can actually be a really great building tool in your STEM space. I hope you enjoyed these easy to implement Valentine’s Day STEM stations.

These are things that I plan really quickly on a sticky note and the kids really, really love them. I did them all last week and I am implementing them again this week. So if you try any of these in your classroom, feel free to tag me on Instagram at Naomi Meredith underscore.

I would love to see how the kids love it. And for any materials that I’m talking about or specific lesson plans, those are linked in the show notes. So you don’t have to take copious notes.

Maybe you already did. And you’re like, oh man, I already did. But those are all linked in the show notes for you.

So you can try these fun STEM themed activities in your classroom. Thank you so much for listening to today’s episode of the Elementary STEM Coach Podcast. I would love to connect with you over on Instagram at Naomi Meredith underscore, or send me an email to elementarystemcoachpodcast at gmail.com. Also, make sure to check out my website, naomimeredith.com to see all the show notes from today’s episode and shop my K-5 STEM resources.

Any questions you have, needs for resources, or ideas for episodes, get in touch. I’ll talk to you soon.