Love Valentine’s Day but don’t want to give up on learning? Combine elements of the holiday and STEM activities when you make this deign a love bug craft challenge!

If your kids love designing and engineering activities for kids, they will love this fun Love Bug craft design challenge! It’s a fun way to bring some Valentine’s STEAM activities to your Valentine’s Day holiday!

Find More Valentine’s STEAM Activities!

Valentine’s Day STEM Activities: Design a Love Bug Craft

For this fun Valentine’s Day design challenge, I challenged my kids to make bugs using craft supplies we had lying around the house.

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links at no cost to you for your convenience.

What you’ll need to make the love bug craft:

To set up this design activity, I laid out a bunch of our random craft supplies for the girls to use. Since the goal was to make bugs, I had to include eyes. I also added pom poms, cupcake liners, chenille stems, heart confetti, and plastic jewels. This made everything sparkly and fun for my kids and on-theme for Valentine’s Day.

I told the girls they were making bugs, but didn’t give them any other directions.

Monkey decided to make a realistic butterfly. She used a chenille stem for the butterfly’s body, glued two cupcake liners to the stem for wings, used two more chenille stems for the antenna, and glued googly eyes to the front of the bug. She decorated her wings with jewels.

Bo decided to go another direction. Her love bug is based less in reality, but it also looks cute. She used a large pom pom as a body, a heart jewel as feet, and chenille stems as antenna. She folded a cupcake liner in half layering a big and mini cupcake liner and glued those to the back for wings. She decorated with heart confetti. Googly eyes completed the bug.

I let my girls use my low-temperature hot glue gun rather than regular glue for this because hot glue dries so much faster. They were getting frustrated with their designs when they tried it with regular glue. But if you are afraid kids might burn themselves on a hot glue gun, you can also use regular glue. Tacky glue will dry faster and stick better than other kinds of glue.