By: Andrea Dillon
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Valentine’s Day brings thoughts of hearts, love, and candy but it is also full of history, art opportunities, and lots of ways to learn something new. Expand your Valentine’s Day lesson plans with these unit study ideas for your homeschool.
Valentine’s Day History Lessons
What is Valentine’s Day? Why do we celebrate this holiday? Learn that and more with the resources below.
Explore the history of Valentine’s Day with National Geographic Kids.
Roman History of Saint Valentine
Easy reader history of Saint Valentine and the history of Valentine’s Day.
Learn about Ester Howland and how she became known as the “Mother of the American Valentine.”
How Chocolate Became A Valentine’s Day Staple
Are chocolates a statement of love or just a way for candy companies to sell more sweets in the lull between Christmas and Easter?
Heart Valentine’s Day Lesson Ideas
Why does the heart symbol represent love? Does our physical heart look like that? Learn all that and more with these Valentine’s Day lesson ideas.
Heart & Blood
What does our heart look like? Our heart pumps blood throughout our body, but how and why?
How to Cut Out a Heart Shape
- Fold a piece of paper in half.
- Put the folded side going up and down.
- Starting at the fold, draw slightly more than half a circle going up and away from the fold.
- From the end of that half-circle, draw a diagonal line down to the fold. The further away from where you started the slimmer the heart will be.
- With the paper still folded, cut along your line, going through both halves of the paper.
- Unfold the heart!
Math Valentine’s Day Lessons
How can you add math into your Valentine’s Day lesson plan? Try these ideas below.
Heart Geoboard Math Activity
Make a simple geoboard with cheap and easy to find materials! Fine activity ideas for STEM fun!
Valentine’s Day Math Worksheets
This page includes Valentine’s Day math worksheets decorated with Valentine’s Day symbols on math topics such as patterning, multiplying and dividing. These worksheets cover some basic topics that you might want to review the week or day of Valentine’s. We hope you appreciate the extra love that we put into these worksheets.
Valentine Symbols Counting Worksheet
For children who are just learning to count and recognize and write numerals.
Valentine’s Day Themed Math Pages
For kids around 6 – 10 years old.
Valentine Geometry
Advanced: If your heart cutout consisted of two half circles and two triangles, can you discover the area of your paper heart?
Science Valentine’s Day Lessons
Valentine’s Day and science? Yes! Find great ways to add some science into your Valentine’s Day lesson with these ideas.
Goldenrod Paper Valentines
When this paper meets a basic substance it turns bright red… so, why wouldn’t it make the perfect
Valentine’s Day experiment? Just add your favorite Valentine shapes to this acid/base experiment and you will end up with the most amazing scientific Valentines you’ve ever seen!
Start making Valentine’s crystals now
They should be ready by the 14th.
Twist the pipe cleaners into the shape of a heart, with a “stem” left to hook over pencil on top of a STRAIGHT SIDED container. (I learned this the hard way, you can tell. You can’t get the crystal out of any non-straight container!) Experiment on seeing what you can add to the solution to make the crystals red. (food coloring, cherry or beet juice – what else?)
Optics of red.
As the eye sees red – tire your eyes of seeing red.
Stare intently at a red sheet of paper for 30 seconds of longer. Then switch to staring at a white or black sheet. What do you notice? On a color wheel, what color is exactly opposite of red? Compare to the color you saw on the second sheet. Why do you think this happens?
Shine a light through a prism, creating a rainbow. Where in the rainbow does red appear? Top? Bottom? Between which other colors?
What is Love? – A Scientific Perspective
Why is it important to talk about love?
Does everyone mean the same thing when they use the word love? Is loving your mom the same as loving chocolate or your country?
Learn how to say “I love you” in several different languages
Why do you think some cultures have one word for “love” while others have very many? This is the scientific study called linguistics or etymology, both valid sciences.
Language Arts Valentine’s Day Lessons
Whether it is writing a poem for your valentine or reading a Valentine’s Day book, there are lots of fun ways to include language arts into your Valentine’s Day lesson plan.
Classical and traditional love poems.
For small children.
DLTK’s Custom Writing Paper
Create a themed Valentine’s paper to write your own poetry or love note.
Valentines Day Word Search
Snuggle with a friend and get hugs and kisses here!
Valentine’s Day Read Alouds
Other books to add to your Valentine’s Day lessons:
Pete the Cat: Valentine’s Day Is Cool
“New York Times bestselling author and artist James Dean takes us on an awesome trip with Pete the Cat as he discovers just how special Valentine’s Day can be!”
“Join Mouse from If You Give a Mouse a Cookie as he celebrates Valentine’s Day with all the friends he loves.”
“The members of Fright Club are always ready to scare, but tonight Fran K. Stein has something else on his mind. He’s busy making something, and the other monsters want to know what it is.”
Find more science, technology, engineering, art, and math Valentine’s Day lesson plan ideas in our STEAM Valentine’s Day Projects For Kids post.
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