Have you started planning your Valentine’s Day activities for school yet? Bringing timely content and activities into your classroom shouldn’t be hard or time-consuming. Help students explore not just the history of the holiday, but also the meanings of emotions like love and gratitude that they can feel and share with others all year long. 

• Read a love story, myth, or poem in ELA
• Discover the history of Valentine’s Day in social studies
• Explore Valentine’s Day experiments in science

[Read a love story, myth, or poem in ELA](id-ela)

See how love and heartbreak are often great sources of inspiration for writers and artists with these curated resources:

Explore Valentine’s Day fiction and poetry

Discover how some writers express the emotion of love through verse, fiction, and myths with these selections:

Poetry

• “My Loves” by Langston Hughes
• “A Red, Red Rose” by Robert Burns
• “When Love” by Alicia Ostriker
• “My Last Duchess” by Robert Browning
• “Sonnet 116” by William Shakespeare

Myths

• Apollo loves Daphne, but she doesn’t love him back: A Greek myth
• Aphrodite, goddess of love and beauty: A Greek myth
• Cupid and Psyche, love and marriage: A Roman myth
• The tragic love story of Orpheus and Eurydice: A Greek myth

Fiction

• “Fox Wedding” by Tim J. Myers
• “The Little Mermaid” by Hans Christian Andersen
• “The Fulness of Life” by Edith Wharton

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Looking for a longer in-class novel or recommendations for students’ independent reading? Try a love story from our Novel and Book Studies collection!

Debate if the benefits of love outweigh the risks

Author Peter McWilliams said “It is a risk to love. What if it doesn’t work out? Ah, but what if it does?” Students can debate if the benefits of loving someone outweigh the risks by using a Pro/Con analysis and tracking authors’ perspectives on the topic while reading poems like:

• “Sonnet XLIII” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
• “A Birthday” by Christina Rossetti
• “Mortality” by William Knox

Research a tasty Valentine’s Day treat

Dig into one of everybody’s favorite Valentine’s Day gifts with a research project. Discover the history of chocolate and its place in our culture with these resources:

• An article that compares the differences between American and British chocolate.
• A biography of one of the most famous chocolate makers in the world. No, not Willy Wonka. Milton Hershey!
• Articles that name the most popular chocolate treats for the major sweets holidays like Valentine’s Day and Halloween.

Explore what it means to love

Love is an abstract concept that has different meanings to different people. Students can explore what it means to love someone by engaging with different texts on topics like:

• How ancient philosophers like Plato described the emotion.
• The advantages of dating someone who’s also your friend.
• The way love is described in poems like “When Love” by Alicia Ostriker and “Prisms” by Laura Riding Jackson

Teach students more about their emotions 

Valentine’s Day is all about sharing those feel-good emotions like love, happiness, and thoughtfulness. Help turn the holiday into a fun social-emotional learning experience:

• Talk about the definition of emotional words like empathy, kindness, and gratitude to better understand what they mean.
• Explore the differences between effective and ineffective communication and how knowing and identifying emotions can make communication easier.
• Have students write a thank-you note to someone important in their lives for Valentine’s Day.

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This lesson is available with the Newsela SEL add-on collection.

[Discover the history of Valentine’s Day with Newsela Social Studies](id-ss)

How much do your students know about the history of Valentine’s Day? Help them learn about the origins, symbolism, and traditions of the holiday:

• Discover the origins of Valentine’s Day and the legend of St. Valentine.
• Learn about the history of chocolate, and why this sweet treat is such a popular gift for the holiday.
• See why some people are ditching traditional Valentine’s Day flowers for more edible gifts, like a bouquet of bacon roses!

[Explore Valentine’s Day experiments in science](id-sci)

Valentine’s Day gifts don’t have to be fancy or expensive to be heartfelt. Seasonal STEAM Valentine’s Day activities can teach students about science concepts and let them create unique presents for family and friends:

Evaporation Crystal Hearts

Shiny and sparkly gifts are often a hit on Valentine’s Day. Students can make their own crystal hearts to give to special people in their lives while learning more about science with this lesson:

• Explore the properties of heterogeneous and homogenous mixtures.
• Discover how matter and energy affect evaporation and condensation.
• Make crystal hearts using construction paper, salt, and water.

Binary Code Valentine

Teach students the basics of computer programming without ever touching a screen! Have students write a secret coded message on their Valentine’s Day presents with this STEM activity:

• Explore the place-value number system we use in counting and measuring.
• Discover how Amazon’s education program may teach more than 100 million students a year how to code.
• Create binary-coded keychains, necklaces, or bracelets with secret messages to give as Valentine’s Day gifts.

Spread the love with Newsela’s subject products

Use Newsela’s knowledge and skill-building products to create timely, engaging lessons all year. If you’re not a Newsela customer yet, sign up for Newsela Lite and get a 45-day free trial of all our premium and differentiated content and activities to help you plan more exciting activities through February and beyond!

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