Engaging Middle School Minds with Valentine’s Day Science

Valentine’s Day is a great time to engage your middle school science students! Here are four ways to celebrate the holiday:

Chemistry of Love

Middle schoolers will be absolutely riveted studying the chemistry behind emotions and love. Discuss neurotransmitters, hormones, and the science of attraction. Include ways that animals attract mates and you’ve got them hooked!

Dissection

For the more hands on approach, ask your butcher for a cow or pig heart and show your students the chambers and valves of the heart. I promise you – they’ll be talking about that for years!

If that’s too gruesome for your kids, dissect a flower – tulips or lilies work best. Show students the path of the sperm to the egg and discuss how seeds grow.

Reproductive Strategies

Extend your learning in to the plant kingdom with propagation techniques. Have students plant spider plant babies, make cuttings of a pothos plant, or .propagate succulent pads.

Venus and Eros

Have students compare oviparous vs viviparous reproduction and trace it to evolution.  Have them compare placental and marsupial mammalian development. Identify species that mate for life.

This Valentine’s Day, Venus will be visible in the morning for those of us in the northern hemisphere. As the planet named for the goddess of love and beauty, your students might be excited to come to school a little early for some planet gazing. Eros, named for the Greek god of love, is the first asteroid ever discovered (in 1898). It is also the first asteroid that was orbited by a spacecraft – the NEAR Shoemaker orbited in 2000 and then landed in 2001.

It’s time to infuse joy, curiosity, and a dash of romance into your science lessons. Seize the opportunity to spark enthusiasm in your students and make this Valentine’s Day a celebration of both science and the heart! Happy Valentine’s Day!