INSIDE: Valentine’s Day Heart Building Challenge a fun and easy STEM challenge for kids. Let your kids design, build, and adjust plans to create a heart shape tower.

Looking for more Fun Valentine’s Day Crafts or Activities? Check out these fun ideas:

• Valentine’s Day Cards Toddlers & Preschoolers Can Create
• 15+ Valentine’s Day Crafts for Toddlers
• 30+ Valentine’s Day Activities for Toddlers & Preschoolers
• Valentine’s Day Activities & Crafts using Contact Paper

Exciting Sensory Bins for Curious Kids

Did you know I wrote a book of sensory bins? Click here for more information Exciting Sensory Bin for Curious Kids. Or grab your copy at Amazon.

Boring afternoons are made exciting with awesome animal-based bins, like Salty Shark Bay or Yarn Farm. Pretend play bins like Birthday Cake Sensory Play or Bubble Tea Party encourage creativity and imagination. And your kids will have so much fun they won’t even know they’re getting smarter with STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art and math) activities like Sink or Float Soup, Magnetic Letter Hunt or Ice Cream Scoop and Count.

Valentine’s Day Heart Building Challenge

This building challenge is super simple to set up but can be challenging for kids.

Here is your challenge: create a heart shape tower using plastic cups and craft sticks. They will need to create the shape of a heart using red plastic cups. Once they have completed that challenge its time to build upwards using craft sticks and more red cups.

Problem Solving

Afer presenting the challenge to my kids, I asked them to start by thinking about the shape of a heart. Where are the points. My 3 year olds needed some help with this so I showed them a heart shape. With my 7 year old I had her start creating the heart with the cups by thinking about the points in a heart.

Then they started adding more cups around they start creating the shape of the heart. Once they completed the base heart it was time to build up. Invite them to use the craft sticks to create a base for the next level cups to stand on. Without a stable base the cups on top will not stand long, as my kids quickly found out.

Creating the heart tower turned out to be harder than they realized. They problem solved and realized that they had used too many cups on the base and placed the cups too far apart to create a stable base for the cups on top.

After a few adjustments they were able to create a two and eventually three story heart tower.

Making Observations

After a few failed attempts, I asked them to think about what they thought was working and what wasn’t. With my 3 year olds, I made some suggestions of where to tweak their structures and asked if they thought would work better or not and why or why not.

This was a fun way to build and to challenge my kids. It was also a great lesson is patience and understanding what a real engineer sometimes has to deal with when creating something new. Trial and error and failures and set backs are all apart of the process of creating something new!

Age Suitability for Valentine’s Day Heart Building Challenge

This activity is great for kids 3 years and up. My kids are 3.5, 3.5, and 7.5 year old.

Supplies for Valentine’s Day Heart Building Challenge

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• Red Cups
• Large craft sticks

Make quiet time their favourite time!

Play is at the core of learning during the early years and it can take many forms. One of the most important of these is sensory play because it engages all of a child’s senses (taste, touch, smell, sight and hearing) and has a enoumous positive impact on brain development.

My Sensory Play Kits are a fun and easy way to keep your child engaged while at the same time capitalizing on the benefits of sensory play to nurture their mind!

Shop my ready made sensory play kits here.

STEAM Activity Book

Looking for a fun activity book for your preschooler this summer? Check out my new book Super STEAM Activity Book: Launch Learning with Fun Mazes, Dot-to-Dots, Search-the-Page Puzzles, and More! ! Click here to learn more or order it now!

WILL YOU MAKE THIS Valentine’s Day HEART BUILDING CHALLENGE FOR YOUR KIDS? PIN IT FOR LATER!