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 engineering inspired love bug craft! If your kids love designing and engineering activities for kids, they will love this fun Love Bug craft design challenge! The love bug craft is a fun, hands-on way to bring some Valentines STEAM activities to your Valentine’s Day holiday!
For this fun Valentine’s Day design challenge, I challenged my kids to make bugs using craft supplies we had lying around the house.
Easy Valentine Love Bug Craft for the Classroom!
Follow along with this easy tutorial to help students create their own unique love bug craft designs using craft supplies you already have lying around the classroom!
Table of Contents
How do you make a love bug?
There are a lot of ways to make a love bug, you can make them realistic like real love bugs, or make them as abstract and cutesy as you like! But to retain the elements of “bugness,” the love bug craft should have legs, a body, antenna, and wings.
What you’ll need to make a love bug paper craft:
Here are the ingredients that will be useful in making a valentine love bug craft from cupcake liners.
- Pom poms
- Cupcake liners
- Heart confetti
- Chenille stems
- Googly eyes
- Plastic jewels
- Tacky glue or hot glue gun
Valentine Classroom Decorations
Add some Valentine’s Day festivities and flair to your classroom with these classroom decorations for Valentine’s Day!
Valentine’s Day Door Decorating Kit
Tissue Paper Classroom Valentine’s Door Decorations
Valentine’s Day Classroom Window Clings
Valentine Letters Classroom Door Decorations
Valentine’s Day Classroom Decorating Kit
Our Class is Sweet Cupcake Valentine’s Day Classroom Decorating Kit
Our Love for Learning Grows and Grows Classroom Decorations
A Class Full of Sweethearts Classroom Decorations for Valentine’s Day
More Valentine’s STEM Activities
Here are some more fun Valentine’s Day STEAM activities to try in the classroom this February!
Valentine Science Books and More!
These fun Valentine’s Day Books for kids will teach kids about the science around Valentine’s Day, the history of the holiday, and a whole lot more!
The Calendar Kids Meet February Book
In My Heart a Book of Feelings
I Love You Around the World Valentine Coloring Book
Candy Bites the Science of Sweets
Celebrate Valentine’s Day Holidays Around the World
Build Valentine’s Day Fun with LEGO
How to Make a Valentines Love Bug Craft
To set up this Valentine love bug craft, I laid out a bunch of our random craft supplies for the girls to use.
You can use any bugs to inspire the design for your love bug craft ideas. Since the goal was to make bugs, I had to include googly eyes.
I also added pom poms, cupcake liners, chenille stems, heart confetti, and plastic jewels.
The pom pom love bug craft made everything sparkly and fun for my kids and on-theme for Valentine’s Day. When done, you can even turn this DIY love bug into a love bug card craft or love bug handprint craft.
I told the girls they were making bugs as their love bug craft, but didn’t give them any other directions for their love bug valentine craft.
Monkey decided to make a realistic butterfly love bug craft, but it was still an easy love bug craft.
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.
Teaching Resources for Valentine’s Day
Here are some fun STEM teaching resources for Valentine’s Day that you can use in the classroom.
Browse the entire category of Valentine’s Day classroom supplies here or grab some of my Valentine’s Day favorites from the list below.
Exploding Candy Lab Science Kit
Chemistreats Classroom Candy Science Kits
Lollipop Lab Candy Science Kit
Valentine Building Block Bears
LEGO Friends Flower and Chocolate Kit
LEGO Pop up Valentine Card with Swans
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.
Classroom Valentines from Teachers to Kids
Your students will love any of these creative classroom valentines for kids from their teacher!
Printable Tea Pun Valentines that Kids Will Love
Zoo You Want to Be My Valentine Zoo Printable Valentines
Army Men Printable Valentines for Kids
Printable STEM Valentines for Kids
Ingenious School Valentines Ideas For Classmates
Magic Erupting Color Reveal Science Valentines for Kids
Printable Punny Chemistry Valentines for Kids
Printable LEGO Valentines for Aspiring Engineers!
Invisible Ink Classroom Valentines
Classroom Valentine Food Building Valentines
Parachute Classroom Valentines
Classroom Valentines Erupting Volcano Science
Classroom STEM Robot Building Kit
Classroom Fuse Bead Valentines
Paper Plane Classroom Valentines
Flower Building Classroom Valentines
Valentines Day Appliance Building Block Valentines
Animal Building Classroom Valentines
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.
Classroom-Friendly Valentine Shirts
I love wearing fun Valentine-themed shirts in the classroom during February. Here are a few of my favorite Valentine Shirts for Teachers.
Be Kind Valentine Teacher Shirt
I Love You Sign Language Teacher Shirt
Kindness Teacher Valentines Day Shirt
Wood Heart Earrings for Valentine’s Day
Teaching Sweethearts Valentine’s Day Teacher Shirt
My Class is Full of Sweethearts Teacher Valentine’s Day Shirt
Tie Dye Heart Shirt for Teachers
Love All Day Every Day Teacher Valentine’s Day Shirt
Painted Heart Valentine’s Day Shirt for Teachers
Heart Fractions Math Teacher Valentine’s Day Shirt
Penguin Heart Teacher Earrings
Valentine Alphabet Teacher Shirt
Heart Envelope Valentine Earrings
ASL Sign Language Love Valentine ASL Teacher Shirt
All We Need is Love Globe Shirt
Valentine Elements Chemistry Teacher Shirt
Valentine SPED Teacher Inclusion Valentine’s Day Teaching Shirt
Teaching Valentine Conversation Hearts Shirt for Valentine’s Day
This Teacher Loves Her Students Valentine’s Day Shirt
Valentine Dinosaur Love Valentine’s Day Shirt for Teachers
Wearing a fun shirt, decorating the classroom with red and pink decorations, and doing other fun Valentine’s Day activities will make Valentine’s Day about more than just cardboard Valentines and candy.
